> Yes I do telephone interviews with people all over the place. Alas I
> don't know that much about him. What's the thrust of the new book?
I just brought it home this evening and haven't started reading it, but he said this afternoon that book came about because Israeli military and security archives which were opened in 1998 provided documentary evidence that the removal of Palestinians was planned and executed from within the highest reaches of the Israeli government, starting in February 1947. IOW, it wasn't something that was simply "borne in the heat of the battle" or whatever the exact phrase of Benny Morris was.
Here is a snippet from an interview on ZNet:
Can you tell ZNet, please, what your new book, "The ethnic cleansing of Palestine" is about? What is it trying to communicate?
The book tries to show that in 1948, the Zionist movement waged a war against the Palestinian people in order to implement its long term plans of ethnic cleansing (whereas Israeli historians, including 'new historians', claimed that the war was waged by the Arab world against the state of Israel in order to eliminate it and it resulted in expulsions of Palestinians). The Arab world tried to prevent this cleansing, but was too fragmented, self-centered and ineffective to stop the uprooting of half of Palestine's native population, the destruction of half of its villages and towns and the killing of thousands of its people.
And since that ethnic cleansing was successfully implemented in almost 80% of Palestine without any global or regional repercussions - the ethnic cleansing policy continues ever since 1967 in the remaining 20% of the country. Creating a Jewish state in historical Palestine cleansed of Palestinians is still the ideological infrastructure on which the state of Israel is based. How to achieve this goal is a divisive issue between Left Zionists - hoping to negotiate a settlement that would leave a small number of Palestinians in a greater Israel and the Right Zionsts willing to implement a more direct cleansing policy from the same area even today.
The book uses the accepted scholarly definition of Ethnic Cleansing to show its academic as well legal applicability to the case of Palestine and argues that since in the eyes of the world - including the State Department and the UN - ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity, this how we should view the Israeli actions in the past and Israel's policies in the present.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11102
Here is a review from amazon.com:
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful: Calling things by their proper names, January 14, 2007 Reviewer: L. J. Waldron (Berkeley, CA)
Review:
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe
Zionist mythology presents events in Palestine in 1948 as the triumph of plucky beleaguered Jews over the combined armies of five Arab nations to secure the existence of modern Israel, while Arabs voluntarily fled their villages to facilitate the annihilation of the Jews. This view is incomplete and false. The Arabs have a different version, much of which has been confirmed by at least two Israeli historians in recent years.
Benny Morris, in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, details the forcible ejection of Palestinians from their villages, confiscation of their livestock and crops, and destruction of buildings so that there would be nothing to return to for those fleeing for their lives. It is no figure of speech to say that the Palestinians were fleeing for their lives because Haganah units in capturing Arab villages summarily executed men and boys suspected of actual or potential resistance. Also, there were massacres, over 20, according to Morris, some by Haganah units, others by Irgun or Stern Gang forces. Morris presents a map showing the names and location of almost 400 Arab villages "abandoned" and estimates that about 700,000 people were displaced.
Ilan Pappe, in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine tells much the same story. But whereas Morris believes that the "cleansing" of Arabs from the land resulted from improvised actions that took advantage of Arab weakness and fear, Pappe documents the pre-planned program of terror to remove Palestinians. Haganah Plan D is the smoking gun that gave specific orders for cleansing. (Pappe states that a Hebrew word of that meaning is actually used in the Plan.) Ben Gurion's diaries and letters give additional evidence that Arab removal and extension of Zionist territory was pre-meditated. From the beginning of December 1947 until May 15, 1948 the "five Arab armies" did not come on the scene. Only poorly armed and led local militias, assisted by a number of Arab volunteers from other countries, were against well armed and organized Zionist forces. During this period about 200,000 Palestinians were displaced.
The most important difference between the two authors is in their differing moral views of the events of 1948-49 and the subsequent subjugation and displacement of Palestinian Arabs that continues. Morris is no friend of the Arabs, and in an interview a few years ago he likened the cleansing of Palestinians to the displacement of the American Indians. His only regret seems to be that the cleansing was incomplete. Pappe quite accurately identifies the cleansing of Palestine as a war crime for which there must be some accounting, even though almost all the guilty leaders are now gone. He goes on to make the point that until there is acknowledgement of this gross injustice, and acceptance of the universally recognized right of refugees to return, no peace plan will work.
http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851684670
As perhaps Brian can attest, Pappe is not just an historian but also an activist. He said this afternoon that the left is too small and fragmented in Israel today and that Israelis are too ideologically hidebound as a whole, so that change will not come from within but from without. He thinks it is Europe's historical obligation to press Israel to come to terms with its crimes against the Palestinians, that Israel's survival depends on it.
The only thing that is difficult is to convey the gentle, slightly ironical style in he tackles these contentious issues in conversation, which is what lead me to think he would be good radio material.
HTH
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Colin Brace
Amsterdam