On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine (Resolution 181) into Jewish and Arab states, and an international zone comprising Jerusalem and the holy sites. The Palestinian population was not consulted. The Plan was rejected by the Arab League, Palestinian nationalists and Zionist militia groups. The British, whose mandate ended on 14 May 1948, let clashes escalate. The Arab inhabitants began to flee the violence.

Jerusalem, a mixed city (of 150,000 inhabitants, of which 100,000 were Jews), isolated from other Jewish localities and surrounded by Arab villages (of 50,000 inhabitants), presented a major problem during the War of 1948. From the end of 1947, Zionist militia groups like the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang launched paramilitary campaigns against Palestinian communities to the west of Jerusalem. On 28 December 1947, the 3000 inhabitants of the village of Lifta sought refuge in Jerusalem.

For decades, Lifta was left abandonned -its original owners living as refugees only a few hundred metres away. Jewish Israelis started to visit the area for holidays, swimming in the spring of Nephtoah identified by Zionists as the northern boundary of the territory of the tribe of Judah. In 2011, the Israel Land Administration issued a public land tender for private construction in Lifta. The aim was to turn the village into a holiday resort comprising 212 houses, a luxury hotel, an upscale shopping mall, a synagogue and an archeological museum aimed at « strengthening the village’s Jewish roots ». The homes of its former inhabitants would become restaurants and art galleries. A wide-ranging coalition of Palestinian and Israeli organisations, including descendents of Lifta, submitted a petition to the District Court of Jerusalem to halt these plans. In 2012, the court temporarily blocked the plans. Despite this, the Israeli government is pressing forward with excavations.

The exodus of Palestinians continued into the early months of 1948. On 7 March, the Arab Popular Army, made up of Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Jordanian and Egyptian volunteers, entered Palestine from Jordan. However, the balance of power remained in favour of the Zionist militia groups which were better equipped and well-prepared.

‘When I come now to Jerusalem, I feel I am in a Jewish city. This is a feeling I only had in Tel Aviv or on a kibbutz. It is true that not all of Jerusalem is Jewish, but it has in it already a huge Jewish bloc: when you enter [Jerusalem] through Lifta and Romema, through Mahane Yehuda, King George Street and Mea Shearim – there are no Arabs. One hundred percent Jews. Ever since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans – the city was not as Jewish as it is now. In many Arab neighbourhoods in the West you do not see even one Arab. I do not suppose it will change. And what happened in Jerusalem and in Haifa- can happen in large parts of the country. If we persist it is quite possible that in the next six or eight months there will be considerable changes in the country, very considerable, and to our advantage. There will certainly be considerable changes in the demographic composition of the country.’ (David Ben-Gurion, War Diary: Vol 1, 7 February 1948)

From April, the Zionist milicia implemented the Dalet Plan, a systematic strategy for cleansing the land of as many Palestinians as possible before the end of the British Mandate. On 9 April 1948, Jewish forces occupied the village of Deir Yassin. Despite the non-agression pact, the villagers reached with the Hagannah, militia from the Irgun and Stern gangs massacred almost 100 villagers. News of the killings sparked terror among other Palestinians communities, causing them to flee their villages and towns.

The Carmeli Brigade took control of Haifa on 20 April 1948. Within a few days, and with the help of the British who chartered boats, 40,000 Palestinians were ‘evacuated’. By the end of the War of 1948, over 60,000 Palestinians had been evicted from Haifa. Their homes were confiscated under the « Absentees Property Law » of 1950. The formerly Palestinian neighbourhood of Wadi Salib was repopulated by survivors of the Holocaust and Moroccan Jews. They were relocated to other neighborhoods in Haifa in 1960 result of the « riots for bread and work » organised in Israel by marginalised Sephardim. They were soon joined by Moroccan Jews. In 1990, a part of this historic neighbourhood was cleared to make way for government buildings, a court house and the Israel Land Administration building. Current plans to create administrative and commercial spaces will result in the expulsion of the last of Wadi Salib’s Palestinian families bringing an end to the neighbourhood’s Arab history.

On 22 April 1948, Operation Hametz (‘yeast’ in Hebrew, signifying the Jewish festival of Passover when the operation occured) was launched in the area of Jaffa. The surrender agreement was signed between the Palestinian National Committee and the leaders of the Hagannah on 13 May. Roughly 4,000 survivors of the 70,000 Palestinian were grouped in the city’s historic area which was declared a closed military zone. Their houses were later declared « absentee properties » and occupied by Jewish immigrants. In 1950, Jaffa was incorporated into the municipality of Tel Aviv under the name Tel Aviv-Yafo. Between 1960 and 2000, more than half the area has been destroyed under the pressure of real estate development. The historic centre of Jaffa has been redeveloped into luxury homes. The remaining Palestinian community is threatened with economic, social and ethnic discrimination. The town has 35,000 inhabitants of which 20,000 are Palestinian (3.7% of the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality). Yet, 60% of them must rent their homes from agencies supervising ‘absentee properties’ such as Amidar and Halmich.

The official birth of the State of Israel –Medinat Yisrael in Hebrew – was 14 May 1948, the day the British Mandate ended. A series of territorial conquests and the strategy of ethnic cleansing allowed it to face the neighbouring Arab states which invaded the following day. The Arab armies – allies in theory but with different goals – fought haphazardly and were unable to vanquish the Israeli army which was armed by Western states and better organised.

Operation Danny, conducted by the Israeli army in July 1948 during the military conquest of Jerusalem, resulted in the expulsion of the 1,100 inhabitants of Sataf and Suba, two Palestinian villages located 15 km west of Jerusalem. The ruins of the village have now been replaced with olive groves and the Sataf nature reserve, which are visited by Israeli armed tourists. Tzova is a kibbutz located below Suba.

1000 farmers in Kafr Bir’im, located in the Upper Galilee near the border with Lebanon, were expelled on 13 November 1948. The village was destroyed by Israeli warplanes in 1953. Since 1967, the 2000 descendents of the ancient Maronite Christian community have the right to worship and be buried here. They keep the memory of the village alive, and continue to demand the right to settle there. Israeli leaders have refused, fearing a precedent that could be used by other Palestinians demanding the right of return to their lost lands. The ruins of the village are now part of a national park. Signs in English and Hebrew mention the ancient Jewish community of Kafr Bir’im but do not mention the fact that the Arab village existed here. In the tourist brochure, only two lines recall the expulsion of the villagers using the word evacuation.

On 3 April 1949, an armistice was signed under the aegis of the UN. The ceasefire line was the Green Line which divided the former Mandatory Palestine into three territories: 80% for Israel, 20% for the West Bank (controlled by Jordan) and Gaza (controlled by Egypt). [The Green Line is not a de jure border; it is rejected by Israel which considers Jews to have ‘historical rights’ over the West Bank. However, it constitutes the generally accepted dividing line between the State of Israel and a Palestinian state.] The sixteen months of war resulted in 20,000 deaths (including many civilians) on both sides. 750,000 of the 900,000 Palestinians who lived in the conquered areas were expelled: al-Nakbah, the catastrophe. In the 1950s, dozens of Arab villages and neighbourhoods of mixed cities were occupied by Jewish immigrants or transformed into ‘artistic colonies’. More than 500 localitied were razed.

The Palestinians who remained in Israel were concentrated in certain neighbourhoods and villages under a military regime (which lasted until 1966). Their property was confiscated under the guise of ‘general interest’, ‘security’ or the management of ‘properties of present absentees’ (that is, internally displaced Palestinians). They became dependent on the Jewish economy for which they were a cheap labour force. All Palestinian organisations were banned. The only form of public expression open to them was the Israeli communist party which was made up of both Palestinians and Jews.

The condition of ‘Israeli Arabs’ did not improve with the Oslo Accords which limited the Palestinian issue to the West Bank and Gaza thereby isolating the Palestinians living inside Israel. Instead, all protests are violently repressed, discrimination and the separating of cities and villages continues punctuated by empty promises during election periods.

The Palestinian community, which represents 20% of the population of Israel, has just 3% of the national territory. 150,000 are considered « internal refugees » and live in villages and other areas considered « illegal » by the Israeli government and therefore under threat of demolition under Article 212 of the Planning and Building Law (1965).