Quote of the Zionist Archive: Looting of Palestinian property and the distribution of spoils within the Nakba
As quoted from "1949, The First Israelis" (p. 68-91)
By the Israeli historian-journalist Tom Segev.
For history's sake, the below article is a MUST READ by Israelis,
Zionists and Arabs alike. Although its contents are based on
DECLASSIFIED Israeli document, for different reasons, the article is
likely to arouse emotions on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict. As you read the article, please note that it has been linked
to other related materials to make your journey More informative.
IN THE EVENING of February 28, 1949, a soldier of the 169th Regiment
entered an abandoned Arab building not far from the boundary line
dividing Jerusalem. On the ground floor he discovered a dry goods store
with a large quantity of glassware. Some ten days later the police
arrested two of the regiment's soldiers in Jerusalem's Mahaneh Yehuda
market carrying items from that store. The affair was the cause of an
extensive investigation, which uncovered a written agreement between a
low ranking army commander and some private contractors. The contractors
agreed to remove the goods to the warehouses of the Custodian of
Abandoned Property, as required by law. In return, they were entitled to
claim 30 percent of the value of the goods as a reward for handing in
abandoned property. In this particular case, they also undertook to
donate 10 percent of the value to the soldiers' fund. The company
commander explained later that his experience in the occupied
neighborhoods had taught him that in such cases it is impossible to
control the men. He stated that he had to promise them some sort of
reward, if only in the form of added income for the soldiers' fund
otherwise they might have suspected him of receiving a personal reward I
from the Custodian. The Chief of Military Police in Jerusalem noted,
"There is good reason to meet the soldiers' demand for 10 percent of the
value, in view of the fact that private contractors were going to be
making such large profits so easily."
During the war and afterwards PLUNDERING AND Looting
were very common. "The only thing that surprised me," said David
Ben-Gurion at a Cabinet meeting, "and surprised me bitterly, was the
discovery of such moral failings among us, which I had never suspected. I
mean the mass robbery in which all parts of the population
participated." Soldiers who entered abandoned houses in the towns and
villages they occupied grabbed whatever they could. Some took the stuff
for themselves, others "for the boys" or for the kibbutz. They stole
household effects, cash, heavy equipment, trucks and whole flocks of
cattle. Behor Shitrit told his colleagues of the Ministerial Committee
for Abandoned Property that he had visited some of the occupied areas
and saw the Looting
with his own eyes. "From Lydda alone," he said, "the army took out
1,800 truck-loads of property." Minister of Finance Kaplan admitted: "
As a matter of fact, neither the Ministry of Finance nor the Custodian
of Abandoned Property is in control of the situation, and the army does
what it wants." The Custodian, Dov Shafrir, told the ministers that the
regional commanders and their adjutants wanted to stop the Looting, "but not the storekeepers of the various companies and squads."
Shafrir, a native of a small village in the Ukraine, was about 50 when
he took on the post of Custodian, two days after the, conquest of Ramlah
and Lydda. Earlier he had been active in a public housing project. As
Custodian he was subordinate to the Minister of Finance. "It was obvious
to me that the nature of the work entrusted to me called for fast and
firm action, if we were to take control over the territory and the vast
amount of property spread over hundreds of towns and villages," he wrote
in years to come. To do this, he had to dispatch men to go from house
to house, from shop to shop, from warehouse to warehouse, from plant to
plant, from quarry to quarry, from field to field, from orchard to
orchard, and also from bank to bank and safe to safe-to count, measure,
evaluate, estimate, replace locks on doors and transfer all moveable
property to well guarded warehouses, while maintaining a correct
inventory of the property and its location. It included a total of
45,000 homes and apartments, about 7,000 shops and other places of
business, some 500 workshops and industrial plants, and More
than 1,000 warehouses. At the same time, it was necessary to continue
harvesting the crops and picking the olives, gathering the tobacco and
the fruit in the orchards-a total of over 800,000 acres. It was also
necessary to take care of livestock-goats, sheep, hens-as well as market
the produce, collect the profits and deposit them in the Treasury. This
would have been an impossible undertaking even if the Custodian had had
at his disposal battalions of skilled and honest workers. In fact, the
staff assigned to do the work was very small, most of the personnel was
inexperienced and knew nothing of administration, and some were
dishonest. Ben-Gurion himself noted that there were thieves and crooks
among them. The Custodian would have had his task cut out for him even
if the army had cooperated with his staff in order to prevent the
plunder, but very often the army did not help. Hours, and sometimes
days, passed before the Custodian and his staff were permitted to center
the occupied villages and towns, and by then all they could do, in some
cases, was to note the destruction and the looting. In Haifa, Jaffa and
Jerusalem there were many civilians among the looters. "The urge to
grab has seized everyone," noted writer Moshe Smilansky. "Individuals,
groups and communities, men, women and children, all fell on the spoils.
Doors, windows, lintels, bricks, roof-tiles, floor-tiles, junk and
machine parts. ..." He could have also added to the list toilet bowls,
sinks, faucets and light bulbs.
The Military Governor of Jerusalem, Dov Yosef, wrote Ben-Gurion:
"The Looting
is spreading once again. ...I cannot verify all the reports which reach
me, but I get the distinct impression that the commanders are not
over-eager to catch and punish the thieves. ...I receive complaints
every day. By way of example, I enclose a copy of a letter I received
from the manager of the Notre Dame de France (a monastery). Behavior
like this in a monastery can cause quite serious harm to us. I've done
my best to put a stop to the thefts there, which are all done by
soldiers, since civilians are not permitted to enter the place. But as
you can see from this letter, these acts are continuing. I am
powerless." Ben-Gurion promised he would discuss with Moshe Dayan the
possible measures to be adopted in order to put an end to the robbery.
The subject troubled him greatly. Prior to the occupation of Nazareth he
ordered Yadin to "use submachine guns on the soldiers if he saw any
attempt at robbery ."
A secret report, written by the Custodian of Abandoned Property tried to
explain how people "succumb to the grave temptation of looting," and
why. First there was the massive flight of panic-stricken Arabs who
abandoned thousands of apartments, stores and workshops as well as crops
and orchards. Second, the property concerned was in the midst of the
front-line combat area during the transition from mandatory to Israeli
rule. This meant there was no stable authority with which to be
reckoned. " ...The moral sense of the few who were attacked by the many
and managed to survive, justified the Looting
of the enemy's property," reported the Custodian. "passions of revenge
and temptation overcame great numbers of people. Under those conditions
only an extremely firm action by the military I administrative civil and
judiciary authorities might have saved, not only the property I but
also many people, from moral bankruptcy. Such firm action did not take
place, and perhaps could not, given the circumstances, and so things
continued to go downhill without restraint." Years later the Custodian
removed the veil of secrecy: "The inspectors found most of the houses
broken into, and rarely was there any furniture left," he wrote in his
memoirs. "Clothes, household effects, jewelry I bedding-other than
mattresses-never reached the warehouses of the Custodial authority. ..."
More
than 50,000 Arab homes had been abandoned, but only 509 carpets reached
the Custodian's warehouses. The Custodian attributed it all to the
"weak ness and greed of many Israelis, who in normal circumstances would
never have permitted themselves to act thus with regard, to other
people's property." He indulged in some philosophical speculation about
it: "Indeed, history repeats itself in all that concerns human nature.
In our own chronicles it is stated simply and plainly without any
circumlocutions: 'But the Children of Israel committed a trespass in the
accursed thing for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zerah, of the
tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing' (sacred loot) (Joshua 7:11.
As you travel through the country today, through the towns and in places
settled by new immigrants and demobilized soldiers as you observe the
teeming life ...your joy is mingled with sadness, the sadness of the
shadow of Achan, who took of the accurse thing."
In Cabinet sessions too the problem of Looting
was often discussed. Minister Shitrit reported thefts in Jaffa and
Haifa. Minister Mordehai Bentov asked about a convoy of spoils which
left, Jerusalem and Minister Cizling said:
". ..It's been said that . 'there were cases of rape in Ramlah. I
can forgive rape, but I will not forgive other acts which seem to me
much worse. When they enter a town and forcibly remove rings from the
fingers and jewelry from someone's neck, that's a very grave matter. ...
Many are guilty of it."
Amin Jarjouria, MK of the (Arabic) Nazareth Democratic List, which was
associated with MAPAI, reported: "Two days after the seizure of Jish, in
the Safed district, the army surrounded the village and carried out
searches. In the course of the search soldiers robbed several of the
houses and stole 605 pounds, jewelry and other valuables. When the
people who were robbed insisted on being given receipts for their
property, they were taken to a remote place and shot dead. The villagers
protested to the local commander, Manu Friedmann, who had the bodies
brought back to the village. The finger of one of the dead had been cut
off to remove a ring. ..." In the State Archives there are many files
containing information about the plundering and Looting,
including the acts of Arab robber gangs. Some of these files are still
closed to researchers. However, something may be learned from the index
titles: Plunder of Abandoned Arab Property; Looting; Possession without
Permit; Robbery. Yosef Lamm, MK (MAPAI) stated, "None of us behaved
during the war in a way we might have expected the Jewish people to
behave, either with regard to property or human life, and we should all
be ashamed."
After a while the Custodian himself began to distribute the I
confiscated property. To begin with, Shafrir later reported, goods,
materials and equipment were turned over to the army, directly from the
stores in the occupied towns. Merchandise which the army did not require
was put up for sale. The sale was conducted by special departments
instituted for the purpose, staffed, as much as war conditions allowed,
by personnel trained in the principal branches of commerce. Other
merchandise was sold through negotiation with merchants or
industrialists, depending on the type of materials. "The army had the
first choice of any goods and materials it might require," Shafrir said.
"Next were the government offices, the war disabled, the Jewish Agency,
the local authorities and public bodies, such as Hadassah." The army
also needed most of the workshop equipment such as cabinet-making shops,
locksmiths-works, turneries, iron-works, tin-works and the like.
Industrial plants which could be operated on their existing sites were
leased out by contract, "whenever possible," according to Shafrir.
Plants which no one wanted to lease were sold to the highest bidder.
The sale of furniture, Shafrir said, "was an especially complex and
difficult business and took a long time." The army had removed from the
houses and obtained from the warehouses furniture worth tens of
thousands of pounds for its offices, homes and clubs. A ministerial
committee resolved to have the remaining furniture, which was mostly
from warehouses, evaluated by professionals and furniture dealers, and
sold to a variety of buyers at this valuation price. If any furniture
was left after the general sale, the Custodian would determine the
method of selling it. The priority list for buyers was as follows: the
families of the war disabled, soldiers' families, government employees
who had been transferred from Jerusalem, civilians who had been injured
in the war, and last of all, ordinary civilians. "In reality," the
Custodian later remembered, "the, last category never got to purchase
any of the furniture, because the higher categories bought practically
all of it."
Yosef Yaakobson-an orange grower, and later an advisor to the Ministry
of Defense-suggested to Ben-Gurion that he expropriate a shoe-making
plant from its Jaffa owner and turn it over to the shoe-making
enterprise Min'al of kibbutz Givat Hashloshah. Ben-Gurion consulted the
Minister of Finance and Kaplan expressed the opinion that the private
property of Arabs who remained in Jaffa should not be expropriated.
Ben-Gurion disagreed; in his opinion only the property found inside
private residences should not be expropriated. Yaakobson told him that
the army was removing goods from Jaffa property estimated at 30,000
pounds daily. Attorney Naftaly Lifshitz of Haifa informed him that in
the banks of that city there were 1,500,000 pounds in deposits belonging
to Arabs. "The banks are willing to turn this property over," noted
Ben-Gurion, and so the government, too, took a hand in the division of
the spoils.
Minister of Agriculture Aharon Cizling wrote to Ben-Gurion :
Again and again in our meetings we discuss the issue of the
abandoned property. Everyone expresses shock, bitterness and shame, but
we have yet to find a solution. ..up to now we have dealt with
individual looters, both soldiers and civilians. Now, however, there are
More and More
reports about acts which, judging by their nature and extent, could
only have been carried out by (government) order. I ask. ..on what basis
was the order given (I hear it has been held back to dismantle all the
water pumps in the Arab orange groves). ...If there is any foundation to
the reports which have reached me, the responsibility rests with a
government agency....Meanwhile, private plundering still goes on,
too.(1)
Cizling himself represented certain well-defined interests. Minister of
Justice Rozen suggested that he address himself to the kibbutzim,
including those of his own movement, and ask them to cooperate with the
Custodian of Abandoned Property in accordance with the regulations,
stipulating that anyone in possession of abandoned property must inform
the authorities within two weeks. The Minister of Agriculture, a member
of kibbutz Ein Harod, replied that it was "awkward" for him to
approached kibbutzim in this matter. At a meeting of Ministerial
Committee for Abandoned Property, Cizling recommended that no steps be
taken against those kibbutzim which were "tardy" in reporting their
possession of abandoned property. His recommendation was adopted. His
colleagues decided that he would consult with the national secretariats
of the kibbutz movements, together with the Minister of Finance, "to
discuss the issue."(2)
Some time later, Ben-Gurion ordered an inspection of all the kibbutzim
and moshavim (villages) of Lower and Upper Galilee for an inventory of
"flocks , and other property 'taken' from the Arab villages during the
war and after; crops, furniture and all other objects, were to be
presented to the Minister of Defense."
A few days after the capture of Jaffa, Giora Yoseftal, Chief of the
Jewish Agency's Department of Immigrant Absorption, went to see how many
new immigrants could be settled in the town. Many of the streets were
empty when he arrived, the houses abandoned and the shops boarded up.
The smell of war was still in the air as well as the residual odors of
life that had existed there earlier. Yoseftal, a tall yekkeh (German
Jew), proper and very thorough, took care to obtain the documentation
showing that he was acting in accordance with official policy. The
documents included one from the Custodian and one from Ben-Gurion
himself, confirming that Jaffa was intended for the settlement of new
immigrants. "Jaffa will be a Jewish city," wrote Ben-Gurion in his
diary, "War is war." Yoseftal set up a "housing committee" in his
department, and assigned it the task of distributing the houses among
the immigrants, in accordance with qualifications and criteria which he
himself determined. But the time was inauspicious for committees and
criteria-the houses in Jaffa fell to whoever grabbed them first.
Shafrir wrote:
With the intensification of immigration in the summer of 1948, the
institutions which looked after the immigrants themselves began to
demand that parts of the city which were still under occupation be made
available to them. The property included warehouses and shops from which
the merchandise had yet to be removed, as well as fully equipped
workshops and plants. In Haifa the inspector's office began to issue
apartments to the Absorption Department as early as July. The intention
was to proceed through the city, quarter by quarter, allocating the
apartments and business premises, after the goods had already been taken
out of them. But the order was not followed. Hundreds of immigrant
families were sent to take possession of apartments, and this caused
confusion both in the collecting of goods and in the distribution of
apartments. In Jaffa the situation was considerably worse. A certain
part of the city was scheduled to be opened on September 10, and a
particular allocation of houses was actually agreed upon-to be given to
the Absorption Department, the army, the government officials who had
been transferred from Jerusalem, and for the children of the settlements
who had been evacuated during the war and who had been living in Tel
Aviv schools, as well as to the soldiers' families. The Tel Aviv
Absorption Department ignored this agreement and went ahead and
organized a mass invasion of hundreds of families. ..before the date
that was originally agreed upon for the opening of the city to
civilians. The government appointed a committee to handle the
distribution of apartments in Jaffa. The committee met and reached
authoritative conclusions. But once again no heed was paid to the proper
agreement. This time the social welfare officers sent hundreds of
soldiers' families. Thus the populating of Jaffa was achieved by
continuous invasions and counter-invasions ." (3)
By established custom, whoever succeeded in placing a bed in a room and
spending the night in it, acquired the right of possession. One day
Avraham Am salem, age 19, entered the house of Mohammed Abu Sirah in the
Ajjami quarter , and, threatening the Arab with his submachine gun,
invaded and occupied the hallway of his house. The man was brought to
trial and in court he explained that he was about to get married and had
nowhere to live. He was sentenced to five days in prison. A few weeks
previously, a few score soldiers, some of them disabled, invaded Arab
houses in Wadi Nisnas and Abbas Street in Haifa. Carrying arms, they
appeared at six o'clock in the morning, and forcibly ejected the
residents. Then they threw out their belongings and brought in their
own. The police came and removed them, but by evening they had invaded
other people's homes. They, too, had nowhere to live.
Not only Arabs were subjected to such violence. Moshe Yupiter, an
Israeli immigrant, got his apartment from the Custodian, but he was
constantly harassed by people who would present themselves, in twos and
threes, as Jewish Agency officials, demand to inspect his rooms, check
the lease agreement and ask other questions pertaining to the apartment.
Yupiter sensed that they were not Jewish Agency officials, and More
than once these "visits" ended in threats and curses. He was fearful.
"There was no one to go to," he complained. "There is no civil police
and the military police is far away from here." Custodian Shafrir
confirmed that "the police help little and the military police not at
all." After receiving permission from the Ministry of Police, Shafrir
managed to recruit a few policemen of his own to work for his office.
Altogether, between 140,000 and 160,000 immigrants were settled in
abandoned homes: in Jaffa some 45,000, in downtown Haifa about 40,000,
and in Acre about 5,000. The man who was put in charge of resettling
Acre was Mordehai Sarid. "We consulted a map," he later recalled. "I
knew which houses I was getting and I worked with engineers to determine
what we would do with each apartment. One place needed sinks installed,
another required a coat of paint, while other places needed flooring
and sewage." The expenses were covered by the Jewish Agency . One day
Sarid asked about some immigrants and was told that they were "getting
organized." "Splendid," he said, "let them get organized." One of his
aides explained what the phrase meant. "They are stealing tables and
wardrobes from abandoned houses." As Sarid put it, he was "terribly
disturbed"; he summoned the most influential persons among the
immigrants and demanded that they all return the stolen property.
According to him, "almost everything" was restored.
Mordehai Elkayam was placed in charge of settling immigrants in Ramlah.
His first step was to tour the town, accompanied by two social workers.
Then he planned the repopulation of the town, quarter by quarter, in
conjunction with the military governor. "We decided to start with one
particular quarter," he related later. "There was no electricity, but
there was running water. The houses were in fair shape. Not much work
needed to be done." Three days later the first immigrants arrived-36
families from Bulgaria. Elkayam went to Ramlah with only two aides. He
recruited his staff from among the immigrants themselves. Their job was
to inspect the empty houses and determine how many families would occupy
them. When the immigrants arrived Elkayam's staff would take them to
the apartments, and divide the rooms and the use of the facilities among
them. Elkayam recalled, "They would paste on the front doors the names
of the families and the number of rooms they were entitled to, so that
they would not 'squat' in any More
rooms (than they were given." He said that the immigrants bought
furniture from the Custodian, and some had brought a few items with them
from abroad. But when asked whether they stole furniture from the Arab
property, he replied: "Well, of course, there was a good deal of
confusion. They bought, they took, in any case, they managed. The early
arrivals still found a few pieces of furniture here and there. The later
arrivals found nothing." In some cases, immigrants squatted in rooms
which had not been as signed to them and had to be forcibly removed by
the army.
By the end of the year some 600 shops in Ramlah had been distributed to
immigrants. Elkayam had no idea what a city might need, so he went to
Tel Aviv. "I went through the streets and made a list of all types of
shops," he related later. "I estimated More
or less how many groceries were needed, how many butcher Shops, how
many barber shops and how many cafes." The shops were then distributed,
as he described it, by a special committee, giving first consideration
to the disabled. But some of the shops were leased to people who could
pay for them. By May 1949 some 8,000 people had been settled in Ramlah.
In Lydda, too, some 8,000 were settled. At that time there was still no
electricity in Lydda, and there was a water shortage. However, most of
the political parties had already opened offices and clubs in the town.
Of the abandoned properties turned over to immigrants those already
operative were: a button manufactory; a carbonated-drinks plant;
sausage, ice, textile and macaroni factories.
In Jerusalem the situation was the same. In April it was decided to
allocate 400 apartments to government officials who would move to
Jerusalem. They had a choice of homes in the better neighborhoods of
Baq'a, the "German Colony" and the "Greek Colony ." The Absorption
Department got the poorer houses of Musrara and Lifta. Shaul Avigur, one
of Ben-Gurion's closest advisors, was to be the absolute arbitrator in
any disputes. The document detailing this division of property does not
mention the elegant quarter of Talbieh. The houses there were given to
senior officials, associates and people with important
connections-government officials, judges, professors at the Hebrew
University, etc. In Jerusalem, too, people were sent to take possession
of empty houses. The immigrants' center in Baq'a sent them to occupy
apartments assigned to government officials.
Hundreds of people moved in on their own initiative. In the files of the
Absorption Department there are lists of such squatters together with
recommendations to let them remain in the apartments they had seized, as
if they had obtained them legally:
Klein, Moshe. Date of Immigration: 7.22.49. Country of origin:
Hungary .Number of persons: four. Squatted on 12.1.49 in Bloc #160,
Section #302, number of rooms: 2. Date of recommendation 1.25.50. Mosud,
Amram. Date of immigration: 3.1.49. Country of origin: Algeria. Number
of persons: 8. Squatted on 8:23.49 in Bloc #112, Section #13, number of
rooms: 2. Date of recommendation:
1.24.50.
It seems that the recommendation was a mere formality. Itzhak Ben-Tsvi warned:
If we go to the leaders of the Jewish communities abroad they too
will ask how the vacant Arab residences were occupied. With More
than 400,000 people evacuated and only 70,000 settled, it could be
interpreted as negligence on our part. The proper utilization of the
abandoned residences is imperative!
And so tens of thousands of Israelis, soldiers and civilians, helped
themselves to the spoils. One took an armchair, another a rug, a third
took a sewing machine and a fourth-a combine; one took an apartment and
another took a vineyard. Very quickly and easily a whole class-albeit a
small one-of newly prosperous people appeared on the scene: merchants,
speculators, contractors, agents of all sorts, industrialists and
farmers. Some stole what property they could, others received theirs
legally. A good many of the transactions fell into that gray area
between what the law permitted and what was considered illegal, between
outright robbery and official expropriation.
Before the appointment of the Custodian there was a Committee for Arab
Property, established by Israel's pre-state army, the Haganah. After the
capture of the Arab quarters of Haifa, Tiberias, Safed, Acre and
Jerusalem, local attorneys were appointed to supervise the abandoned
property. The decision to centralize and formalize the procedures for
handling the property came as a result of the growing amount of property
and the increased incidence of looting. Under British rule there had
also been a Custodian-for German and other alien property. At first the
Custodian was seen as a temporary trustee of property left behind by the
refugees, which would have to be maintained until their return. The
Emergency Regulations, which served as the legal framework for the
Custodian's functions, limited his prerogatives: he could not sell the
properties he had in his charge, but only lease them for a period not
exceeding five years. Most of the refugees were not allowed to return,
and with few exceptions, Israel did not return their properties to them,
although it did not expropriate them formally. The government did
declare its willingness to compensate the refugees, but only as part of a
general peace settlement. The question of what would be done with enemy
property had preoccupied Ben-Gurion even before the Declaration of
Independence. "The property belongs to the government," he resolved. The
Prime Minister was deeply interested in the methods of expropriating
the ownership of the abandoned property.
Starting in the latter half of 1948, the Ministry of Justice worked on
the drafting of an Absentees' Property Law, giving the Custodian a share
in the ownership of the property he had hitherto controlled as a
trustee, and authorizing him to transfer it to a newly established
"Development Authority." The Ministry's draft proposed a literal
definition of the term "absentee," namely, one who was no longer present
in the territory of the state. When the draft was brought before the
Ministerial Committee, Moshe Sharett demanded that the definition be
changed to designate anyone who had left his home after a certain date
(November 29, 1947), regardless of where he might have lived thereafter.
He drew attention to thousands of refugees who had left their villages
and settled in Nazareth. If they were not defined as absentees, it would
be necessary to let them return to their homes. Sharett also raised the
possibility that Israel might one day seize Nablus on the West Bank,
which was a "reasonable likelihood," he thought. In that case thousands
of refugees would come within Israel's jurisdiction and they would
demand to return to their homes and take back the properties they had
abandoned. Sharett's reservation was accepted. Consequently, the
definition in the law was changed to embrace all who had abandoned their
"usual place of residence," even if they were still living in Israel.
Some time after, the Custodian was authorized to sell the abandoned
property to the development authority, and the Government of Israel
authorized the latter to sell it to the Jewish National Fund. More
than half a million acres were thus expropriated from their owners. A
few thousand of these owners were actually living in Israel, yet the law
defined them as absentees, even if they had only left their homes for a
few days and stayed with relatives in a nearby village or town, waiting
for the fighting to end. Later they came to be referred to as "present
absentees." The majority of them were not allowed to return to their
homes. Those refugees who were permitted to return to Israel after the
war were also formally absentees and their property was not restored to
them.
In one of the Prime Minister's Office files there is a correspondence
between several government Ministers, arising from the application of a
Haifa Arab lawyer, Elias Koussa, to David Hakohen, MK. The attorney
wished to know what was the ruling in the case of an absentee who had
been allowed to return to Israel under the family reunification
agreement, and after his return received properties which had not
belonged to him before leaving, whether by way of purchase, inheritance
or any other means. The Minister of Justice expressed the view that an
absentee remains an absentee forever, even when allowed back and so long
as he is an absentee his property belongs to the Custodian, regardless
of when or how he acquired the property. Police Minister Shitrit
disagreed. Eventually the law was changed to make it possible for
"present absentees" to acquire new property .
The law had other bizarre aspects. Yohanan Bader, MK (Herut) stated,
"According to this law, the Israeli army is full of absentees. ...Every
man who went to war on or after November 29, that is to say, left his
city-is an absentee, unless he has a certificate to prove that he is not
an absentee."
The authority of the military governors was also utilized to expropriate
lands. The military governor would issue an order to expel villagers
from their homes, or forbid them entrance to their fields and thereby
prevent them from cultivating them. Then the Minister of Agriculture
would declare the lands to be uncultivated and use his authority to hand
them over to others to cultivate. In this way Arab farmers lost their
lands without actually losing their title to them. Other laws which
served the same purpose were later passed. The properties of the Waqf
(the Moslem religious authority) were also frozen as if they belonged to
absentees. According to the Moslem religion, the Waqf properties belong
to God. "God has become an absentee!" wrote poet Rashid Husein in one
of his protest songs.(4)
In September 1951 the Custodian M. Porat-who had succeeded Shafrir-sent a secret report to the Minister of Finance. He wrote:
"The fact that we are holding the property of legal residents of the
country, who otherwise enjoy all the normal rights of citizenship, is a
source of great bitterness and constant agitation among the Arabs who
are affected by it. Most of the complaints made by Arabs against our
department are made by 'absentees' who see their property in the hands
of others and can't bear it. These absentees try by every means to get
their lands back, and offer to lease them even at exorbitant rents. In
accordance with the general rule originally established. ..our office
does not lease the lands expropriated by the government to the present
absentees, so as not to weaken our control over the properties in our
charge, and this gives rise to complaints and bitterness. Clearly, this
policy does not enhance a spirit of good citizenship among the Arabs who
returned, and the question arises whether the state, having allowed
certain Arabs to come back, or approved their infiltration de facto,
should provoke their extreme resentment and expose them to the
inordinate incitement of certain political elements. In my opinion, it
should not. That is to say-the government policy should make the legal
definition of 'absentee' match the normal connotation of the word's
meaning, i.e., a person who is absent. That should be the policy. The
question remains, how would the policy be applied. It seems to me that
at present there is no practical way of carrying out the policy I have
suggested, at least with regard to real estate. The number of 'present
absentees' runs into the thousands, most of them owners of real estate.
There are already new people living on some of these properties,
particularly in the border settlements. Any attempt to return the
properties to these absentees would, therefore, adversely affect
thousands, or tens of thousands, of settlers, not to mention army camps
and installations."
To relieve the resentment of the "present absentees," the Custodian proposed that their bank accounts be released to
them, and that a way be found to compensate them for their properties.
Attorney General Shapira had made the same recommendation long before,
though without any illusions: "In the end we shall both pay compensation
and still be considered thieves," he predicted in August 1949. And so
it was. The government offered the compensate only a few of he property
owners and its offers were hardly tempting. Only a few accepted them,
and the compensation was generally viewed as unfair. (8)
In the Knesset debate about the work of the Custodian, Yaakov Gil, MK,
of the centrist General Zionists, claimed that 90 percent of the
abandoned property was being give tot he members of the MAPAI. "Other
parties, and ordinary Jews who belong to no party," he said, " are left
out and have received no benefit from this property. The Custodian
handles the property as he pleases, to suit himself and the party of
which he belongs, his friends and associates. . . . The entire country
has become a single Poltibureau." But some property was allocated to
various other parties and political organizations.
The abandoned property in the villages was divided in much the same way
as in the towns and cities. While the war was still going, Levi Shkolnik
(Eshkol), Head of the Settlement Department of the Jewish Agency, went
on tour of the Arab villages which has recently been abandoned and
captured. As put it, he saw " the traces of what had been and was no
longer" --- the houses broken into, plundered and burned. "The sight
sank through my eyes and nostrils into my head, brain, blood, and heart .
. . " One day, in the letter half of 1948, Eshkol drove up to
Jerusalem. With him were his driver and Raanan Weitz, his aide. They
passed near Birieh, a little village perched on top of a rocky hill
southeast of Ramlah, overlooking the road to Latrun. "I did not know the
details, yet" he related alter, "but I believed the the desolate and
abandoned place might solve the problem of settling the nation." He
stopped the car and he and Weitz went for a walk through the village. As
they proceeded to Jerusalem they drew up a plan. Eshkol related, "That
evening I . . . sent for the engineers, asked the Engineer Corps for
assistance and began to turn the great wheel which enabled us that very
winter to transform More than 45 abandoned villages into lively new settlements." (5)
In the latter half of 1948, the settlement department of the Jewish
Agency prepared a list of several dozen Arab villages which it proposed
to repopulate with new immigrants. Most of the villages had been
abandoned, but a few were not quite empty. Some were meant to be
demolished and their lands to be used for new settlements. Some of the
Cabinet ministers criticized the army for demolishing some of the
villages it occupied. The subject was brought up time after time by
Ministers Shitrit, Bentov and Cizling. "As I travel about I hear rumors
about the destruction of property and I should like to know who gave the
order to do this," said Cizling at one meeting. "I was in Beit Shean
and was told by people I trust that the anny commander had received an
order to destroy the place. ...These are facts about villages which I
have seen destroyed. In the Hefer Valley I saw Arab villages which had
been abandoned by their inhabitants and were not destroyed during the
campaign. Now they are in ruins and whoever did it should be called upon
to explain. ..." Ben-Gurion replied: "When you say Beit Shean, that is a
particular place. But when you mention generally 'ruined villages'-I
can't send people to look for ruined villages." Cizling asked: "Who
destroyed the village of Cherkass in the Hefer Valley? At an earlier
meeting I mentioned Moussa Goldenberg who reported an order to DESTROY
40 villages and named you, as the source of that order. I stated then
that I did not believe it was really done in your name. I am not
speaking now about the political aspect, but about things which seem to
be happening by themselves, without control. Even if I agreed with a
certain act-I wouldn't accept it being done by itself."
Not everything happened "by itself": in September Ben-Gurion informed
the Ministerial Committee for Abandoned Property that the commander of
the central front, Tsvi Ayalon, considered it necessary "to demolish
partially" 14 Arab villages, for reasons of security. "As it is
extremely difficult to convene the committees," Ben-Gurion wrote his
ministers, "would you please let me have your opinion in writing. I
shall await your answer within three days. ... Lack of response will be
viewed as consent." The ministers demanded further information. In
September 1949 the Cabinet debated the destruction of the old city of
Tiberius. Yigael Yadin was quoted as recommending that the entire city,
except for the holy places, be destroyed, in order to prevent the Arab
residents from returning.
The authorities also included in their plans lands owned by Jews. They
were inclined to emphasize that most of the Arab lands they proposed to
expropriate were not cultivated, and that even after the expropriations
the Arab villages would still have enough lands to sustain them. The
planning was done in close cooperation with the army. The army
recommended certain locations and often demanded that they be settled.
The assumption was that the new settlements would serve to fortify the
country's borders and prevent the return of the villagers who had fled
and been driven out in the course of the war and its aftermath.
Yosef Weitz, of the Jewish National Fund, saw the new plans as the
direct sequel to the efforts made by the Zionist movement over the past
years, through the Jewish National Fund, to "redeem" the land. Hundreds
of thousands of acres had been purchased from their Arab owners over the
years, bit by bit. The process continued after the Declaration of
Independence. "I marked on my map land areas of one village after
another," noted Weitz in his diary, "and I should like to swallow it
all." Weitz spent most of his time traveling around the country. The
abandoned villages set his imagination alight. At night, standing empty
and dark, he wrote the villages "terrified" him. By day, when he saw
them looking so picturesque and blooming, but still empty, he "felt
ashamed" that they had not yet been settled by Jews: "This is a wide
country," he wrote, "the sense of its breadth makes one feel so secure."
Ben-Gurion thought that purchasing land was a waste of money. He
preferred to expropriate the land and thought that the Jewish National
Fund's willingness to pay only made land More
expensive. Weitz continued to purchase, among other reasons, because he
feared that the Fund and all its staff would become superfluous and be
closed down. "Ben-Gurion's way of thinking is that the state is above
everything, and that the Zionist Federation is only there to serve it,
and should exist only as long as it is needed," he noted bitterly.
Before long, the government decided to promote the settlement of
immigrants in the abandoned villages of Galilee. In August 1948, the
Ministerial Committee discussed the creation of 61 new settlements. The
settling authorities recommended that only 32 of them, on some 30,000
acres, be built for the time being. Of those lands some 14,500 acres
belonged to Arabs, 5,000 to the government, 5,000 to other owners,
chiefly German, and in one case to the Waqf; about 5,000 acres belonged
to Jews. The Ministers considered the future of the Arab inhabitants and
made suggestions for transferring them legally. The Minister of
Agriculture described the legal arrangements as "a fiction."
A few days later officials of the Department of Health went out to
inspect an abandoned Arab village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. They
were accompanied by representatives of the military government and of
the Absorption Department of the Jewish Agency. The health inspectors
found Anopheles--malaria-mosquitoes in the village, and stated that
before it could be re-inhabited the houses would have to be fumigated
with DDT and the water wells purified. This was a budgetary problem, and
the Health Department proposed using volunteer labor. It was easy work,
the Department promised, offering the volunteers protective gloves for
the purpose. The Jerusalem District Officer informed the Department that
there was as yet no plan for resettling the village, but in the
meantime the staff of the Jewish Agency's settlement section had already
gone there to inspect the place. On their return they reported:
". ..We have no data concerning the size of the lands, as there are
no accurate maps of the village and environs, but as far as we could
tell from examining the site, the cultivable lands are considerable,
extending over a few hundred acres. These lands have been cultivated for
many years by the former inhabitants of the village. Around the houses
there are orchards, fruit trees and olive groves, which would be
suitable for sustaining future settlers. In view of the above, we
recommend that the village be settled in two different ways. 11 Houses
with home farms, each on a total of 1.25 acres, the land to be used for
growing vegetables and fruit trees. In addition, each settler would
raise between 500 and 1,000 head of poultry. The village center would
serve to settle artisans, who would have their workshops and quarries
there, serving both the local population and that of Jerusalem. The two
groups can amount to a total of 150 to 200 families--i.e., 50 units of
houses with home farms, and the rest housing only. The buildings are
generally well constructed and do not require much repair. There is a
water well beside each house, and the proximity of the central water
pipe that supplies Jerusalem makes additional water supply a possible
alternative. There are no modern toilets, but they could be provided.
There are community buildings in the village, such as a school, a
central building for public institutions, etc. ..."
A slight misunderstanding ensued in the next few weeks between two
departments of the Jewish Agency, each of which wanted to be put in
charge of the village. In January it was decided that the village would
be handed over to the Absorption Department, which would establish an
immigrant camp on the site. The decision was made at a meeting which was
also attended by Shaul Avigur, one of Ben-Gurion's top aides. In the
minutes of that meeting it is stated that approval by Avigur was
tantamount to approval by Ben-Gurion himself. Therefore, an immigrant
camp was established in the village. In the following weeks they looked
for a contractor whose offer would be lower than that of Solel Boneh
(the Histadrut construction corporation); they also persuaded the
Hamekasher transport company to open a bus route to the village, and the
post office to connect it to the telephone network. Jerusalem Mayor,
Daniel Oster, was called upon to make a contribution-he offered a
four-inch water pipe, Simultaneously, they settled the village with
immigrants from Poland, Rumania and Slovakia, members of an association
which was linked with the orthodox movement Poalei Agudat Israel. A
cooperative store, a medical clinic and a synagogue were opened. The
Ministry of Education inquired if it was necessary to open classes in
the village. By the summer of 1949, 5 acres of olive groves had already
been ploughed over and 300 crates of plums had been marketed from the
village orchards. The grape harvest began and a new settlement was well
under way. The village was now given the name Givat Shaul Bet. In the
past it had been known as Deir Yassin.
There is a file at the Prime Minister's Office, dealing with the rural
settlement of immigrants, which contains a letter signed by Martin Buber
and three other noted scholars, Ernst Simon, Werner Senator and Cecil
Roth. They asked Ben-Gurion that Deir Yassin be left uninhabited, or at
least that its settlement be postponed until the wounds had had a chance
to heal. "We are well aware of the hardships suffered by our brothers,
the new immigrants, who have reached their homeland after many years of
wandering and being confined in concentration camps, and here too are
still without a proper roof over their heads," wrote the scholars.
"Moreover, we fully realize that the Government of Israel must provide
for their housing to the best of its ability. However, we do feel that
Deir Yassin is not a suitable place, or, at any rate, that the time has
not yet come to decide on establishing a Jewish settlement in that
village. The name of that village has become infamous throughout the
Jewish world, the Arab world and the whole world. In Deir Yassin
hundreds of innocent men, women and children were massacred. The Deir
Yassin affair is a black stain on the honor of the Jewish nation. The
Zionist movement, the army and our government of the time (the Jewish
Agency Executive), all felt this acutely and most unequivocally
condemned the deed at the time.
"There are certain symbolic acts in the life of a nation that must be
avoided, and there are certain educational values that must be
preserved. In the case of this great and ancient nation, and this state,
so small and so young, this is even More
imperative. We hope that time and constructive acts of friendship will
heal even this sore wound, which is far too fresh-just as fresh as our
own memory of the tragedy of April 13th, when the medical convoy to
Hadassah on Mount Scopus was massacred 124 hours after the massacre in
Deir Yassin). The time will come when it will be possible to conceive of
some act in Deir Yassin, an act which will symbolize our people's
desire for justice and brotherhood with the Arab people. We are already
now proposing such an act. But in the meantime, it would be better to
let the lands of Deir Yassin lie fallow and the houses of Deir Yassin
stand uninhabited, than to carry out an act whose negative symbolic
impact is infinitely greater than the practical resolution it can offer.
Resettling Deir Yassin within a year of the crime, and within the
framework of ordinary settlement, would amount to an endorsement of, or
at least an acquiescence with, the massacre. Let the village of Deir
Yassin remain uninhabited for the time being, and let its desolation be a
terrible and tragic symbol of war, and a warning to our people that no
practical or military needs may ever justify such acts of murder and
that the nation does not wish to profit from them." (6)
A few months later the village was mentioned again. This was in the
course of a Knesset debate on the government's decision to permit the
return of 100,000 Arab refugees to Israel.
Yaakov Meridor (Herut): "Soviet Russia knew how to solve the problem
of the Volga Germans during the war. There were 800,000 Germans in that
region. ...They transferred them to the east, beyond the Urals. If
there should be a second round of fighting, where shall we transfer this
fifth column? With the coastal region being only 10 miles wide, how
shall we do it? Or perhaps we'll have to evacuate Tel Aviv so as to
settle them there and keep an eye on them."
Tewfik Toubi (Communist): "You're preparing another Deir Yassin!"
Meridor: "Thanks to Deir Yassin we won the war, sir!"
A. Ben-Eliezer (Herut): "Don't be so sad."
A. Cizling (MAPAM): "Don't boast about Deir Yassin."
E. Raziel-Naor (Herutl: "There's nothing to be ashamed of ...!"
Zalman Aran (MAPAI): "As a member of the Knesset I must comment on
one interjection that was heard here yesterday from the Herut benches.
The interjection was, We are not ashamed of Deir Yassin."
A. Ben-Eliezer: "How many Deir Yassin have you been responsible for?"
Aran: "For your sakes, I should like to say that I don't believe you're not ashamed of Deir Yassin."
Ben-Eliezer: "You don't have to bring Up something that you yourselves performed."
Aran: "I don't know that we performed any Deir Yassin."
Ben-Eliezer: "If you don't know, you can ask the Minister of Defense!"
Aran: ". ..If I thought that the State of Israel would be capable of
Deir Yassin, I would not only not wish to be an Arab here--I wouldn't
want to be a Jew here!"
In the Central Zionist Archives and in the State Archives there are many
files dealing with the resettlement of Givat Shaul Bet. The former name
of the village is given in brackets, evidently without any indication
of embarrassment. The press, too, reported the resettlement as if it had
been an ordinary village, like any other. Several hundred guests came
to the opening ceremony, including the Ministers Kaplan and Shapira, as
well as the Chief Rabbis and the Mayor of Jerusalem. President Haim
Weizmann sent written congratulations. The band of the school for the
blind played and refreshments were served.(7)
Amid the diaries, letters, telegrams, memoranda, reports, minutes,
essays, poetry, prose, newspaper articles and speeches written during
those months, a few lines recorded from a speech made in the Knesset by
Dr. Zerah Warhaftig, in the course of a debate about the absentees'
property, stand out:
...Who better than us, a people without land, who for so many
generations could not call even a few feet of land its own, can know and
must know how to appreciate land. The word for man in Hebrew (Adam' is
derived from the Hebrew word for land (Adamah). Our Sages said, " A man
without land is not a man." Only now that we have a state and a land of
our own, can we be called both a nation and men.
With the mass immigration of Jews, especially from Arab countries, the
newspapers tended to portray Arab emigration as part of a general
exchange of population and property between the incoming Jews and the
outgoing Arabs: Jewish immigrants from Arab lands had left their homes
behind, just as the Arabs in Israel had, the papers contended.
The daily Haaretz worried More
about whether the abandoned villages would provide enough housing. "We
are on the verge of a serious crisis with regard to immigrant
absorption," warned the respected paper. "In another month the abandoned
lands will hold no More room for new immigrants."
Related Footnotes
(1)
In the Custodian's report it was stated that "a widespread operation of
dismantling the (water pump) engines had been carried out throughout
the country .This had to be done in order to collect all the motors in
the abandoned orange groves because of the many robberies, and so they
could be put to use when they would be needed." Cizling raised the issue
of the plundering of the orange groves in the Cabinet, too.
(2)
By the time Shafrir reached Beersheba, two days after it was captured,
the army had already removed several tractors from the town, but had
left a few others where they were. The Custodian's staff removed the
remaining ones and placed them in surrounding kibbutzim for "storage."
Shafrir wrote to the Ministerial Committee: "Presumably the Ministry of
Agriculture will not wish to remove them from the Negev, and it will be
necessary to distribute them among the kibbutzim." In his report he
stated that heavy and agricultural equipment were sold at the
recommendation of the Ministry of Agriculture.
(3)
The Absorption Department strenuously denied these charges. According to
its spokesman, it was the Ministry of Defense which attempted to seize
houses designated for immigrants.
(4)
When the Minister of Finance brought the Absentees' Properties Law
before the Knesset he warned the members not to talk carelessly: "We are
a small country," he said, "but the interest of the world in all that
happens and is said here is immense. It's as if the eyes of the world
are constantly on us, watching, exploring, analyzing every step, every
act, every word." To put Israel's actions in a better light before the
eyes of the world, Kaplan was careful to point out, apologetically that
in India and Pakistan, too, the governments had expropriated the
properties that the refugees left behind. An internal report, which was
not published, noted other precedents: Turkey had expropriated the
property of the Greeks and Armenians; Bulgaria expropriated the property
of the Greeks; Iraq of the Assyrians; Czechoslovakia, Rumania and
Yugoslavia expropriated the properties of the German minorities.
(5)
But at the end of November he said to his Jewish Agency colleagues that
he was aware that the Arabs might yet return to the occupied zones.
"Since our own agriculture is intensive," he said, "we may be able to
give them some of the lands for cultivation." He expressed the view that
he did not care to house the immigrants permanently in Arab houses, but
meant to build them new ones.
(6)
Ben-Gurion did not answer this letter. Buber and his associates sent him
a copy I and then another copy, until the Prime Minister's secretaries
wrote back that he was presently too busy to read their letter.
(7)
The press expressed no qualms in reporting the resettlement of other
abandoned villages, a total of 350. The reports reflect a solid belief
in the right and justification of the resettlement. Davar: " ...At the
sound of the Israeli soldiers marching, the Arabs were seized with a
great terror and left their homes, with their heavily loaded camels and
donkeys, en route for the border.
...And now in Jamsin-renamed Givat Amal-live new residents, recently
arrived via Cyprus, survivors of the camps of Europe. ...They sit around
a long table, with one remnant of the abandoned furniture, and tell
their tales. ..." Haaretz: " ...Patches of brilliant green are now
surrounding the houses in the abandoned villages, thanks to the
activities of the Ministry of Agriculture that helps the new immigrants
develop their home farms. ..." Dvar Hashavua: " ...You will not
recognize Aqir! More
than a thousand immigrants have settled in the abandoned village. ..."
Similar descriptions were published about Deir Yassin. The immigrant
camp was later turned over to the Ministry of Health, which converted it
to a sanitorium for the mentally ill. Parts of the village became one
of the neighborhoods of the new city of Jerusalem, other parts remained
deserted.
(8)
In one Foreign Ministry file there is a record of correspondence which
links the possibility that Israel would pay compensation to the Arab
refugees with the possibility that West Germany would compensate the
Jews for the Nazi crimes. At some stage the idea was also raised that
the property of Arabs in Israel would be held as security against Jewish
property in the Arab countries. This was Behor Shitrit's proposal. The
Legal Advisor to the Foreign Ministry rejected it. When the sale of
abandoned Arab property was finally allowed, Israeli undercover
immigration agent in Iraq telegraphed in horror: "What's going to happen
to Jewish properties here.?!"
