The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine 1948

In 1947, the population of Palestine was 1,750,000, of which 70% were Palestinian Arabs, both Muslim and Christian.

The UN partitioned Palestine and gave 55% of the land to the Jewish population to create the state of Israel.

The Palestinian inhabitants of the land weren't consulted on the partition plan, rendering it illegal.

In March 1948, Jewish forces put into effect a carefully prepared plan (Plan D) to seize more Palestinian land for the state of Israel.

Extract from Plan D, for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine of its Arab population: 'These operations can be carried out in the following manner: either by destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up, and by planting mines in their rubble)...or by encirclement of the villages, conducting a search inside them.'

A total of 31 massacres were carried out by the Jewish forces, including in the village of Deir Yassin, where approximately 250 women, children and men were killed in what began as a dawn raid and lasted two days. (April 1948)

A 12-year-old Palestinian child at Deir Yassin said later: 'They took us out one after the other, shot an old man and, when one of his daughters cried, she was shot too.

'Then they called my brother Muhammed and shot him in front of us. And when my mother yelled, bending over him - carrying my little sister Hudra in her hands, still breastfeeding her - they shot her too.'

Like other Palestinian villages, Deir Yassin was then burnt to the ground.

In the village of Tantura, in May 1948, Jewish forces separated 200 men and boys between the ages of 13 and 30 from the rest of the village and shot them dead in cold blood.

Palestinians in the cities weren't spared from the atrocities. Terrorism was used against the 75,000 strong Palestinian population of Haifa. They were subjected to heavy shelling, bombing, sniper fire and the igniting of deliberately spilled oil. Civilians trying to flee the port town by sea were shelled.

The orders to the Jewish troops were: 'Kill any Arab you see; torch all inflammable objects and force doors open with explosives.'

They succeeded in their objectives and the Arab population in Haifa was reduced from 45% to just 4%.

A witness to the flight from Haifa said: 'Men stepped on their friends and women on their own children. The boats in the port were soon filled with living cargo. The overcrowding in them was horrible. Many turned over and sank with all their passengers.'

By the time Jewish troops had finished their ethnic cleansing and land grab, 13,000 Palestinians lay dead, nearly 500 Palestinian villages had been burnt to the ground, and 750,000 Palestinians driven from the country of their birth and forced to live abroad, or in the camps of Gaza and the West Bank, as refugees, where they remain today - the largest refugee population in the world. (There are currently 7.2m Palestinian refugees worldwide)

But the operation was a success. When it ended, in 1949, the state of Israel had grown to occupy 78% of what, just two years earlier, had been Palestine.

Menachem Begin, the leader of one of the Jewish military organisations (Irgun) which carried out the massacres, and who later became a Prime Minister of Israel, said: 'As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere...Oh Lord, Oh Lord, you have chosen us for conquest.'

The remaining 22% of the land is now known as the Gaza Strip (bordering the Mediterranean) and the West Bank (bordering Jordan).

Both areas were occupied by Israeli troops in 1967 and the Palestinian population is subject to ongoing terror.

UN Resolution 242 calls on Israel to withdraw from the territories it has illegally occupied. Israel refuses and, instead, has removed the borders of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from all its maps, including in Israeli schoolbooks and tourist maps.

Sources: Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Friends of Al Aqsa (Peace in Palestine)