Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Map 1 The United Nations Partition Plan, November 1947
- Map 2 Arab settlements abandoned in 1948–9
- Map 3 Jewish settlements established in 1948–9
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction to the revised edition
- 1 Background: a brief history
- 2 The idea of ‘transfer’ in Zionist thinking before 1948
- 3 The first wave: the Arab exodus, December 1947 – March 1948
- 4 The second wave: the mass exodus, April–June 1948
- 5 Deciding against a return of the refugees, April–December 1948
- 6 Blocking a return
- 7 The third wave: the Ten Days (9–18 July) and the second truce (18 July–15 October)
- 8 The fourth wave: the battles and exodus of October–November 1948
- 9 Clearing the borders: expulsions and population transfers, November 1948–1950
- 10 Solving the refugee problem, December 1948 – September 1949
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1
- Appendix 2
- Bibliography
- Index
- Titles in the series
1 - Background: a brief history
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Map 1 The United Nations Partition Plan, November 1947
- Map 2 Arab settlements abandoned in 1948–9
- Map 3 Jewish settlements established in 1948–9
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction to the revised edition
- 1 Background: a brief history
- 2 The idea of ‘transfer’ in Zionist thinking before 1948
- 3 The first wave: the Arab exodus, December 1947 – March 1948
- 4 The second wave: the mass exodus, April–June 1948
- 5 Deciding against a return of the refugees, April–December 1948
- 6 Blocking a return
- 7 The third wave: the Ten Days (9–18 July) and the second truce (18 July–15 October)
- 8 The fourth wave: the battles and exodus of October–November 1948
- 9 Clearing the borders: expulsions and population transfers, November 1948–1950
- 10 Solving the refugee problem, December 1948 – September 1949
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1
- Appendix 2
- Bibliography
- Index
- Titles in the series
Summary
Modern Zionism began with the prophetic-programmatic writings of Moses Hess, Judah Alkalai, Zvi Hirsch Kalischer and Theodor Herzl and the immigration from Russia to Ottoman-ruled Palestine in the 1880s of Jews dedicated to rebuilding a national home for the Jewish people on their ancient land, the Land of Israel, in Zionist parlance. The immigrants were impelled both by the positive ideal and by the negative experience of oppression in Eastern Europe; a wave of pogroms had engulfed Russia following the assassination of Czar Alexander II in March 1881.
Simultaneously, during the last decades of the 19th century, Arab intellectuals in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt began to advocate a revival of Arab culture and cultural ‘independence’ from the Ottoman Empire. By the beginning of the 20th century, with the spread of the spirit of nationalism to the area, they began to think and talk about ‘decentralising’ Ottoman rule and, more hesitantly, eventual political liberation and the establishment of an independent Arab state.
The spread of Jewish settlement in Palestine resulted in friction between neighbouring Arab and Jewish communities. Townspeople and villagers resented the influx of Russian- and Yiddish-speaking, Allah-rejecting foreigners and began to fear cultural–religious subversion of their way of life and physical encroachment and even displacement.
The First World War, which destroyed the Ottoman Empire, exacerbated regional nationalist hopes and fears and changed the face of the Middle East. The idea of national self-determination, trumpeted by the victorious Allies, fired the imaginations of the educated throughout the colonial world.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003