1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War - Book Review

Described on the dust jacket of this book as “the leading figure among Israel’s ‘New Historians’,” Benny Morris now occupies a contradictory position when considering Palestinian-Israeli issues. He remains a New Historian in his close examination of archival material and his often unflinching presentation of evidence damning to official Israeli claims of no responsibility for expelling Palestinians; in 1948, he refers to “massacres,” “atrocities” that included rape, and “cleansing” as activities undertaken by Zionist and then Israeli forces throughout 1948. Yet, Morris has moved much closer to the right-wing nationalist camp in linking Palestinian resistance to Zionism to jihad and inherent hatred of Jews. To this end he contradicts David Ben-Gurion, whom he quotes as acknowledging that Palestinians had opposed Zionism because “we have come here and stolen their country” (p. 393). Morris now resembles Likudists in his attribution of racism to Palestinians and Arabs generally even as he provides archival evidence that the same could be said of many Israelis in 1948.

1948 can be seen as the culmination of a research agenda spanning over 20 years, beginning with the publication of The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, whose recent revised edition (BPRP#2) doubled the size of the original book.¹

But 1948 also can be seen as highlighting an increasing tendency in Morris’s work to stress anti-Semitism as a motivating force behind the actions of those opposing Zionist goals, first seen clearly in his study of Glubb Pasha.² 1948 is, therefore, a major work that demands close attention by scholars as much because of the author’s prejudices and contradictions as for Morris’s detailed investigations and analysis of Zionist/ Israeli and Palestinian behavior during both the pre-independence conflict and then during the Arab-Israeli wars that followed independence.

The bulk of the book focuses in great detail on the period just before and after the declaration of Israeli independence on May 14, 1948. After a brief chapter on “Historical Background,” and a second on UNSCOP and the United Nations partition resolution in late November 1947, Morris covers the period from November 1947 to mid-May 1948 in two chapters dealing with the Palestinian-Zionist “Civil War;” the second of these, dealing with the six-week period from April to mid-May, amounts to 67 pages. Three succeeding chapters cover the period of the Arab states’ invasion on May 15, the truce, and the second stage of the war which, for Morris, went well beyond the official truce in mid-July and extended to mid-October; Chapter 5, “The Pan-Arab Invasion, 15 May–11 June 1948,” takes up 84 pages. Chapters 7-9, spanning from mid-October to January 1949, discuss Israeli debates about land and boundaries, including Ben-Gurion’s eagerness to take the West Bank, and the pretexts employed to justify attacking Egyptian forces and absorbing the Negev into Israel. Chapter 10 examines the Armistice accords with Arab states, followed by “Some Conclusions.”

This detail often covers the same ground found in BPRP#2 and presents the same arguments and terminology, albeit organized somewhat differently. Regarding sources, 1948 cites a few archival sources not mentioned in BPRP#2, but many more from the latter are not cited; the same can be said for published documents. Conversely, Morris herelistsnewspaper sources,includingArabic as translated by Israeli Arabists at the time, omitted from his 2004 work, and his secondary literature citations run to 11 pages in 1948 as opposed to five in the 2004 study of the refugee problem. Especially noteworthy for those familiar with Morris’s previous work will be Chapters 7-9. They offer far more information about Israeli policies and actions in the last half of 1948 than any work previously published. Morris is unsparing here in noting “atrocities” committed by Israeli brigades.

Equally if not more significant is Morris’s stance toward long-standing claims that the Zionists had a specific plan to expel Palestinians, Plan D[alet]. He states (p. 120) that Plan D triggered “a minor [sic] historiographic controversy with Palestinian and pro-Palestinian historians” who claimed that Plan D was a “master plan” for the expulsion of all Palestinian Arabs. For Morris, Plan D dealt with areas awarded Israel by the United Nations Partition Plan, along with Jewish settlements located beyond those boundaries. Within those boundaries, commanders had carte blanche to take their own decisions. Furthermore, no official directive to implement that policy can be found. Thus, Zionists cannot be accused of deliberate actions taken under orders, though Morris then admits that such implementation did occur from early April 1948 onward, outside the lines drawn by Plan D.

There is much equivocation here. Morris quotes Plan Dalet to the effect that “[The villages] in your [brigade commander’s] area, which have to be taken, cleansed or destroyed