Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
31 March
MERCILESS, PLANNED ETHIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINE
By this day in 1948, the Zionist Haganah militia completed the demolition of Abu Kabir. Operation Lamed Hey was an assault six weeks earlier on Abu Kabir to "cleanse it of the forces acting there." When this area of Jaffa had been conquered, Ben Gurion ordered that, as with most of conquered Palestine, the area’s expelled Arab population must not be allowed to return: "If there will be Abu Kebir again - this would be impossible...It won't be acceptable to us for Abu Kebir to be Arab again."
التطهير العرقي المخطط له بلا رحمة في فلسطين
31 مارس
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1948 ، أكملت ميليشيا الهاغاناه الصهيونية هدم أبو كبير. سميت هذه العملية الهجومية: لاميد هي والتي بدأت هجومًها قبل ستة أسابيع على أبو كبير "لتطهيره من القوات العاملة هناك". عندما تم احتلال هذه المنطقة من يافا ، أمر بن غوريون ، كما هو الحال مع معظم مناطق فلسطين المحتلة ، بعدم السماح للسكان العرب المطرودين من المنطقة بالعودة اليها: "إذا كان هناك أبو كبير مرة أخرى - فسيكون هذا مستحيلًا ... لن نقبل ان يكون ابو كبير عربيا من جديد .
'In a meeting of the [Zionist] Provisional Government a month after the conquest of Jaffa, Ben-Gurion stressed the importance of “preventing the return” of Jaffa’s Arab population, using as an example the border neighbourhood of Abu Kebir: “If there will be Abu Kebir again—this would be impossible. The world needs to understand that we are 700,000 against 27 million, one against forty... It won’t be acceptable to us for Abu Kebir to be Arab again."
'At the end of the war all of the twenty-six Palestinian Arab villages in the Jaffa subdistrict were emptied or destroyed; Jaffa itself had “totally collapsed.” Prime Minister Ben Gurion envisioned that Jaffa was to be resettled entirely by Jews: “Jaffa will be a Jewish city....War is war."
Overthrowing geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the struggle for Palestine, 1880-1948, Mark LeVine 2005, p. 212
The minutes of an Israeli Cabinet meeting of 26 Sep 1948 reveal Ben Gurion calling for wider attacks on areas not yet conquered by Zionist forces and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian residents:
"If war broke out, we would then be able to clear the entire central Galilee with one fell swoop. But we cannot empty the central Galilee - that is, including the [Arab] refugees - without a war going on. The Galilee is full of [Arab] residents; it is not an empty region. If war breaks out throughout the entire country, this would be advantageous for us as far as the Galilee is concerned because, without having to make any major effort - we could use just enough of the force required for the purpose without weakening our military efforts in other parts of the country - we could empty the Galilee completely."