The first Arab–Israeli war, of 1948, was launched by the Palestinian Arabs, who rejected the UN partition resolution and embarked on hostilities aimed at preventing the birth of Israel. That war and not design, Jewish or Arab, gave birth to the Palestinian refugee problem.

But the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from the areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish State was inherent in Zionist ideology and, in microcosm, in Zionist praxis from the start of the enterprise. The piecemeal eviction of tenant farmers, albeit in relatively small numbers, during the first five decades of Zionist land purchase and settlement naturally stemmed from, and in a sense hinted at, the underlying thrust of the ideology, which was to turn an Arab-populated land into a State with an overwhelming Jewish majority. And the Zionist leaders' thinking about, and periodic endorsement of, ‘transfer’ during those decades – voluntary and agreed, if possible, but coerced if not – readied hearts and minds for the denouement of 1948 and its immediate aftermath, in which some 700,000 Arabs were displaced from their homes (though the majority remained in Palestine).

But there was no pre-war Zionist plan to expel ‘the Arabs’ from Palestine or the areas of the emergent Jewish State; and the Yishuv did not enter the war with a plan or policy of expulsion. Nor was the pre-war ‘transfer’ thinking ever translated, in the course of the war, into an agreed, systematic policy of expulsion.

The First Truce ended on 8 July, with the Egyptian army initiating battle in the south. The following day the IDF went on the offensive in the northern and central fronts. In its subsequent counter-offensive in the south, codenamed ‘Mivtza An-Far’ (Operation Anti-Farouq), the IDF failed to establish a corridor from the Jewish-controlled Coastal Plain to the 20-odd, besieged Negev settlements but, together with the Negev Brigade, managed to expand its hold in the northern Negev approaches and overrun clusters of villages, including Masmiya al Kabira, al Tina, Qazaza, Tel as Safi, Qastina, Jaladiya, Juseir and Hatta, thinning the Egyptian army's line of fortifications from Majdal (Ashkelon) to the Hebron Hills (via Faluja and Beit Jibrin). In the north, in ‘Mivtza Dekel’ (Operation Palm Tree), the IDF conquered parts of the Galilee, including the towns of Shafa ‘Amr and Nazareth.

But the IDF's main effort was in the centre, where ‘Operation Dani’ was designed to fully open and secure the length of the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem road and to push back the Arab Legion from the vicinity of Tel Aviv by conquering the towns of Lydda and Ramle and, later, Latrun and Ramallah. Operation Dani attained only its first objectives, with the IDF conquering the Lydda–Ramle plain, including Lydda (today, Ben-Gurion) International Airport.

The IDF operations of 9–18 July, triggered by the Arabs' unwillingness to prolong the 30-day truce and, in the south, by the Egyptians' pre-emptive offensive, created a major new wave of refugees, who fled primarily to Jordanian-held eastern Palestine, and to Upper Galilee, Lebanon and the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip.

In the weeks and months after the termination of hostilities, the Israeli authorities adopted a policy of clearing the new borders of Arab Communities. Some were transferred inland, to Israeli Arab villages in the interior; others were expelled across the border. The policy, which matured ad hoc and haphazardly, was motivated mainly by military considerations: The borders were long and highly penetrable. Along the frontiers of the newly conquered territories there were few, if any, Jewish settlements. Arab border villages could serve as way-stations and bases for hostile irregulars, spies and illegal returnees. In the event of renewed war, the villages could serve as soft entry points for invading armies.

At the same time, IDF, police and GSS units repeatedly scoured the populated, semi-populated and empty villages in the interior to root out illegal infiltrees and returnees. Some, such as Farradiya, sat astride strategic routes; almost all, given the State's size and shape, were themselves relatively close to the borders. In one or two cases – vide Faluja and ‘Iraq al Manshiya in the south – the authorities expelled whole villages from sites in the interior. In general, throughout this period, the political desire to have as few Arabs as possible in the Jewish State and the need for empty villages to house new immigrants meshed with the strategic desire to achieve ‘Arab-clear’ frontiers and secure internal lines of communication.

In 1988 CUP published the first edition of this work, which sought to describe the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem that, along with the establishment of the State of Israel, was the major political consequence of the 1948 war. The study examined how and why, over November 1947–October 1950, an estimated 600,000 to 760,000 Palestinian Arabs departed their homes, moving to other parts of Palestine (i.e., the West Bank and Gaza Strip) or abroad, primarily to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. There are today on the United Nations rolls close to four million Palestinian refugees (the Palestinian Authority says five million). About one third live in so-called refugee ‘camps’, which in reality are concrete-structured slum neighbourhoods on the peripheries of cities (Nablus, Gaza, Ramallah, Beirut, Damascus, Amman, etc.).

Perhaps curiously, little serious historiography had been produced, both in the four decades before the publication of the original version of this book or since, on why and how these Palestinians became refugees. Soon after 1948, several chronicles were published by Palestinian exiles, including ‘Arif al ‘Arif's Al-Nakba, 1947–1952 (the catastrophe 1947–1952) and Haj Muhammad Nimr al Khatib's Min Athar al Nakba (following the catastrophe). About a decade after the event, Walid Khalidi, a Palestinian scholar, published two academic essays, ‘The Fall of Haifa’ and ‘Why Did the Palestinians Leave?’, that shed fresh light on aspects of the subject.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Allon (Paicovitch), Yigal (1918–1980) b. Kfar Tavor, Palestine. Commander of the Palmah 1945–8. OC Operation Yiftah (April–May 1948), OC Operation Dani (July 1948) and OC Operation Yoav (October 1948). OC Southern Front September 1948–1949. Minister of Labour 1961–1968, Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister 1974–1977.

Abdullah, Ibn Husayn (1882–1951) b. Mecca. Emir (1921–1946) and King (1946–1951) of Transjordan\Jordan.

Ben-Gurion (Gruen), David (1886–1973) b. Poland. Settled in Palestine 1906. Secretary-General of the Histadrut 1920–1935. Chairman of the Jewish Agency 1935 – May 1948. Leader of Mapai. Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of Israel 1948–1954, Prime Minister and Minister of Defence 1955–1963.

Carmel (Zalizky), Moshe (1911–2002) b. Minsk Mazowiecki, Poland. Settled in Palestine 1924. Member of Kibbutz Na‘an. OC Haganah Haifa District 1947. OC Carmeli Brigade April–May 1948. OC Northern Front (Operation Dekel and Operation Hiram) July 1948–1950. Editor Lamerhav (Ahdut Ha‘avodah's daily) 1960–1965, Minister of Transport 1955–1956, 1965–1969.

Cisling, Aharon (1901–1964) b. Russia. Settled in Palestine 1904. Member of Kibbutz ‘Ein Harod. Ahdut Ha‘avodah leader. Minister of Agriculture (Mapam) 1948–1949.

Cohen, Aharon (1910–1980) b. Bessarabia. Settled in Palestine 1937. Member of Kibbutz Sha‘ar Ha‘amakim. Director of Arab Department, Mapam and member of Mapam Political Committee, 1948–1949.

Cunningham, General Sir Alan Gordon (1887–1983) b. Dublin. GOC 8th Army 1941, last British High Commissioner in Palestine 1945 – May 1948.

Danin, Ezra (1903–1985) b. Jaffa. Senior officer of Haganah Intelligence Service (Shai)1936–1948. Official of Arab Division, JA-PD 1940–1948. Member of Arab Affairs Committee of the National Institutions 1940s. Member of first and second Transfer Committees and Senior Adviser on Arab Affairs to the Foreign Ministry 1948–1949. Orange-grower.

THE PALESTINE CONCILIATION COMMISSION AND LAUSANNE I: STALEMATE

International efforts at the end of 1948 and during the first half of 1949 to solve the refugee problem proceeded along two crisscrossing avenues – one, as conducted by agencies of the United Nations, primarily the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC), and the other, as conducted by the Great Powers, meaning, primarily, the United States. Both sets of efforts were guided in large measure by Bernadotte's testament, the interim report of mid-September 1948, and its ‘doctrinal’ postulate that the right of the refugee to return to his home and land was absolute and should be recognised by all parties. This postulate was enshrined two months after the Mediator's death in UN General Assembly Resolution 194, of 11 December 1948. The resolution stated that ‘the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date’. (The resolution also offered those ‘choosing not to return’ the alternative of ‘compensation’.) The PCC, set up by the resolution, was instructed to facilitate the ‘repatriation’ of those wishing to return.

The absolute nature of the return provision was immediately and almost universally qualified, in the minds of Western observers, by the appreciation that Israel would not allow a mass return and that many refugees might not wish to return to live under Jewish rule.

The Middle East is the world's most controversial region. Yet despite all the attention focused on the area, many longer-term and vitally important issues and trends often seem to be overlooked in the immediate and crisis-oriented focus. This book is an attempt to get beyond that barrier in order to deal with important points that, although generally neglected, help to explain the rush of events and developments.

While it uses printed primary sources, it should be stressed that this book also tries to bring to light the behind-the-scenes dialogue that goes on concerning the region. It is based on hundreds of conversations over several decades with Arabs and Iranians trying to understand and explain their region. The gap between official and published discourse and what people really think, but often cannot say, is central to the analysis presented here.

A note on transliteration: I would have preferred to have a consistent transliteration of Arabic names; the problem is that sources used often employ a different spelling from what I would prefer. To alter all of the spellings from the translations and other materials would lead to even greater confusion. Consequently, aside from some basic standardization, I have left the spellings as they appear in the source footnotes, though I would have preferred to do otherwise.

I would like to thank the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center of the Lauder School of Government, Interdisciplinary Center, for its help, and to thank especially Cameron Brown, Lawrence Joffe, Joy Pincus, Elisheva Rosman, and Caroline Taillandier for their help.

Cumulatively, the twentieth century's second half was a very bad era for Arab peoples and polities. Each year added to a seemingly endless list of problems and failures. Few if any of their basic foreign policy goals were achieved, and the gap between theory and reality opened up further during the post–Cold War era. At home, Arab countries lagged behind many others in the pace of their economic development and social progress; the Middle East remained less democratic and more repressive than any region on earth after the fall of communism.

Under normal circumstances, this situation should ultimately have led to a serious reevaluation – which indeed did happen during the 1990s – and change. Yet despite the demonstrated deficiencies of the radical expectations that almost always dominated Arab rhetoric and so often determined political behavior, these old ways were not rejected. Instead, they were merely revived, preserved, or just repackaged with new slogans and justifications. The region's dramatic daily events, colorful personalities, and frequent crises dazzle the eye and appear to involve continual transformation. Yet in the end, what is truly remarkable is how little Arab ideology and politics have changed despite the glaring inadequacies they have constantly showed.

But why has such an awesome gap opened up between ideology and goals, on the one hand, and events on the other? And why has the Arab world found it so hard to challenge and revise its own disproven assumptions and failed policies? The key to this apparent mystery is hidden in the issue of who is to be blamed for this unhappy history and pessimistic outlook.

One of the main reasons for the failure of Middle Eastern political systems is that their disfunctionality is profoundly logical. In short, there are very sound reasons why they don't work very well. The regimes' strength has enabled them to twist societies, economies, and ideologies in order to ensure their own survival. Repression has always been an important tool toward this end, as in all dictatorships. But the Arab world has been distinctive in the fact that demagoguery has been the regimes' first line of defense, helping to ensure voluntary cooperation by business classes, religious authorities, intellectuals, and the masses themselves. As a result, these groups usually willingly pay the price of preserving the status quo. Even opposition forces have their assigned role to play in safeguarding the system.

All of the Arab world's leaders are essentially dictators, though of course the regimes and societies vary on many points. Some are nationalist/ populist dictatorships (Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen), while others are monarchical/traditional dictatorships (Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates). Some are more repressive, and some allow considerable margins of freedom. Lebanon is the only country that can really claim to be democratic, albeit along strictly defined ethnic-communal lines. Yet it too is a dictatorship. The difference is that its particular dictator does not live in Beirut but rules from a neighboring country's capital, Damascus. Perhaps Kuwait and Bahrain have made the most progress, but in those places, as elsewhere, democratic developments are quickly reversible.

After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack that killed more than 3,000 people in the United States, there was much discussion about what role U.S. Middle Eastern policy had played in motivating the terrorists and those who supported them or at least sought to justify their deeds. American policy was said to be responsible for profound grievances on the part of Arabs and Muslims that required an apology for past behavior and a change in future U.S. policy, and that somehow justified or explained the attack.

But this argument misrepresented the history and nature of U.S. Middle Eastern policy to the point that it became a caricature of reality. Equally, such distortions made it far more difficult to understand the terrorists' true motives and the reasons why many Arabs and Muslims seemed to support or sympathize with them.

This basic worldview is well represented in a 1981 speech by Syrian President Hafiz al-Asad: “The United States wants us to be puppets so it can manipulate us the way it wants. It wants us to be slaves so it can exploit us the way it wants. It wants to occupy our territory and exploit our masses.… It wants us to be parrots repeating what is said to us.” The part chosen by Arab nationalist and Islamist ideology for the United States to play is that of the nineteenth-century imperialist state, seeking to build a Middle Eastern empire in which Arabs and Muslims are colonial subjects. Actual U.S. behavior is largely irrelevant, as it will always be reinterpreted to fit into this mold, a distortion that well serves the needs of both regimes and revolutionary movements in the region.

It was the end of an era for a young century. Lasting peace, rising prosperity, and expanding democracy had seemed inevitable. A return to the past of irrational conflict, the triumph of forces opposing progress, had seemed impossible. Yet in August 1914, these dreams were being shattered for Europe. British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, looking out his window as twilight fell in London, said mournfully, “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

In European cities, towns, and villages, crowds cheered the advent of war as a relief from everyday life's boredom and disappointments, manifestating the all-too-human desire to leap over difficulties and to solve the myriad problems of individuals and societies in a single bound. Once again, from this moment and for many decades thereafter, Europe was engulfed in turmoil – including three major international conflicts – as factions battled over democracy versus despotism and over which political, economic, and social system would dominate the modern world.

During this era of about seventy-five years, from World War One's beginning to the Cold War's end, prospects for stability and peaceful progress were repeatedly disrupted by national hatreds, unresolved ethnic conflicts, economic depressions, and ideological struggles. Attempts by a single leader, idea, or country to dominate the continent would destroy cities and pile up mountains of corpses. Only near that terrible twentieth century's close did Europe evolve beyond that phase to achieve a basic consensus on key issues that made possible real peace and cooperation.

To start a book on the contemporary Middle East by referring to a past European era of crisis may seem strange.

For fifty years the Arab-Israeli issue often appeared to be the single most important feature of Middle Eastern politics. Seemingly unsolvable, it sparked seven major violent conflicts. Yet, gradually and reluctantly, most Palestinians and Arab states seemed to be reassessing their goals in order to accept a land-for-peace solution instead of seeking Israel's destruction. This shift, in turn, made possible changes in Israeli policies and public opinion that opened the way to a peace process.

Realizing the inability to solve the conflict through force should have been a major step toward reaching a peaceful resolution. Only when both sides perceived that neither Israel's destruction nor the Palestinians' permanent exile and political extinction would happen could the parties involved become ready for a two-state solution, giving each side a national framework. Equally, the conflict's apparent endlessness, incurring high costs with no prospect for absolute victory, made success at the bargaining table seem both plausible and desirable.

In general, the basis of the peace process was supposed to be the Palestinian and Arab conclusion that the conflict's costs exceeded its benefits and that a compromise, negotiated outcome was the best they could do. But were these assumptions true? If the conflict was a millstone around the Arab world's neck, then ending it made eminent sense. But if it was a foundation stone for the existing Arab system, it had a value going far beyond the immediate issues involved. In that case, no war, no peace was preferable to either war or peace.

During the twentieth century's second half, the Middle East knew more international wars, repression, civil wars, terrorism, and revolutionary insurgencies than any other area in the world. Aside from its quantity and wide distribution, Middle Eastern violence was most distinguished by two factors. First, compared to that of other regions, far more of it was inspired and supported by cross-border rather than by purely domestic factors. This does not negate the importance of ethnic, ideological, and factional struggles for control of specific countries elsewhere, but cross-border sponsorship of subversion in the Middle East far exceeded that in any other region. Second, while violence elsewhere in the world tended to occur in specific countries at particular points in time, conflict – government, intergroup, and interstate – was a far more universal and long-term phenomenon in the Middle East.

Why is force and violence so pervasive in the region? There are, of course, a number of unresolved issues; but, after all, disputes can also be resolved by negotiations or compromise without resort to violence. The most important answer to this question is that the methods used in handling conflict depend on the attitudes and goals of the parties involved. In a situation where individual states, groups, or ideologies seek regional conquest or reject other countries' sovereignty, force will be an important aspect of interstate relations. Where revolutionary forces believe themselves to possess absolute truth and reject the existence of other communities, violence is a favored option. When peaceful reform is blocked and when political goals are absolutist, bloodshed is a likely outcome.

For decades, and especially since the Iranian revolution, there has been a tremendous battle for the soul of Islam among adherents of that religion holding very differing views. Radicals raised new interpretations that they claimed to be in accord with true Islam as it was originally meant to be. In fact, though, their worldview – which was at odds with how Muslims had practiced and thought about their faith for a thousand years – constituted an attempt to transform that religion. While the Islamists face an uphill battle – and arc more likely to make trouble than they are to make successful revolutions – they certainly have a better chance to succeed in revising Islam than do the far weaker liberal Islamic forces.

Many Arab governments hoped, however, to use the movement for their own purposes, channeling its anger against others. The regimes and their media told the West that the Islamists were not against “us” because of our mismanagement, incompetence, corruption, and repression, but against “you” because of your foreign policy. The regimes wanted to transform the Islamists from being a revolutionary movement to being an effective lobbying tool vis-á-vis the West. Moreover, a radical Islamist movement that put the emphasis on hating the West and Israel was much more useful for Arab regimes than a revolutionary Islamist movement that was firing machine-gun bullets at its officials. The solution, then, was not to change the system or quality of government in the Arab world, but for the West to give the rulers more respect, money, and concessions.

Iran's Islamic revolution was an earthquake that shook the Middle East and seemed permanently to reshape Iran itself. Yet 20 years after its apparent total victory, the revolution's failures sparked a protest movement that captured some of the nation's institutions and won support from most of its people. Still, Iran did not become an example of a successful transition to democracy and moderation, but just another case of a dictatorial system, like those in the Arab world, that was very good at keeping power but not at much else. The most remarkable thing about postrevolutionary Iran was the dramatic rise of popular democratic expression coupled with its total ineffectiveness in altering the country's system and structure.

In many ways, Iran followed the pattern of the Arab world. The regime used the same basic techniques employed by its counterparts there. For Iran, as for the Arab states, the 1990s did not bring reform or a functioning democracy, even if, in contrast to Arab states, the masses were openly on the side of change. Modernization was blocked, radical foreign policies (though more cautious in deed than in rhetoric) prevailed, and dictatorship survived. Yet there were also significant differences. In Iran, the system faced far more serious challenges. Power was divided, and democratic forces were far stronger. Still, despite the partial change and hope visible in Iran, it too has been stuck in the process of shifting paradigms. The government accepted the result of relatively free elections, but then blocked them from having any real effect.

Why was Iran different from the Arab world? It is impossible to understand all of the historical, cultural, and other factors.