1948, 20 May: Count Folke Bernadotte was appointed as UN mediator in Palestine.
1948, 22 May: UN Security Council called for a ceasefire and a truce was held between 11 June and 8 July
1948, 26 May: At the meeting of the Mapam’s Political Committee, Eliezer Prai, editor of the party’s daily newspaper, Al Hamishmar, charged that there were elements in the Yishuv carrying out a ‘transfer policy’ by ‘blood and fire’, aimed at emptying the Jewish state of its Arab inhabitants. “It has already been said that Weitz gave an order to expel the Arabs from Western Galilee…This is the policy and thinking behind [the destruction of the Arab villages in the area]”, he said.
1948, 28 May: Yosef Weitz met with Moshe Shertok (Sharrett), the newly appointed Foreign Minister, and proposed that the Cabinet appoint himself, Elias Sasson, head of the Foreign Ministry’s Middle East Affairs Department, and Ezra Danin “to hammer out a plan of action designed [to achieve] the goal of transfer”. According to Weitz, Shertok congratulated him on his initiative. Shertok’s “view also is that this momentum [of Arab flight] must be exploited and turned into an accomplished fact,” but the Foreign Minister wanted first to consult with Ben-Gurion and Finance Minister Eliezer Kaplan.
1948, 30 May: Weitz, Danin, and Sasson met to outline the ‘Transfer’ committee’s prospective work in spite of the fact that there was no official Cabinet appointment.
1948, 4 June: “The [transfer] committee that had appointed itself”, as Weitz referred to it in his diary, met in Tel Aviv to discuss ‘the miracle’ of the Arab exodus “and how to make it permanent”. The committee concluded, “The return of the Arabs must be prevented”. Weitz agreed to “allocate £ 5,000 to Ezra [Danin] in order to begin destruction and renovation activities in the Beit Shean Valley and in the Sharon [the Coastal Plain]”. Destruction of Arab villages meant that the refugees would have nowhere to return to; renovation meant readying the sites for Jewish settlement.
1948, 5 June: Weitz met with Ben-Gurion and submitted to him a memorandum entitled “Retroactive Transfer, A Scheme for the Solution of the Arab Question in the State of Israel”. The memorandum outlined proposals for action aiming at preventing the Arabs from returning to their towns and homes.
According to Weitz, “Ben-Gurion agreed to the whole line”, but thought there was an order of priority. According to Weitz, Ben-Gurion wanted destruction of villages, settlement on abandoned sites, and prevention of Arab cultivation. Weitz told the Prime Minister that he had already given orders to begin destroying villages.
Ben-Gurion proposed that a committee of three – composed of representatives of the JNF, the JA settlement department, and the Agency’s treasury department – be set up to oversee “the cleaning up of the [Arab] settlements, cultivation of their [fields] and their settlement [by Jews], and the creation of a labour battalion to carry out this work”. Ben-Gurion, like Weitz, stressed that it would not be the government carrying out these activities, but they would be carried out by the ‘National Institutions’.
1948, 6 June: Weitz sent Ben-Gurion a detailed list of the abandoned villages and towns, with the appropriate population figures. In a covering note, he confirmed the meeting held in the previous day as well as Ben-Gurion’s approval that the destruction of Arab villages and prevention of cultivation of Arab fields will begin immediately. Weitz continued: “In line with this, I have given an order to begin [these operations] in different parts of the Galilee, in the Beit Shean Valley, in the Hills of Ephraim and in Samaria [meaning the Hefer Valley].”
1948, 7 June: Weitz spent the day talking with Danin about how to go about destroying the abandoned villages – where would the money come from, the tractors, the dynamite, the manpower?...
1948, 17 June: Bernadotte met with the Israeli Foreign Minister to discuss the situation of the refugees. Sharett was evasive with regard to the return of the refugees.
1948, 7-18 July: The IDF captured the towns of Lydda and Ramle. Dozens of Palestinians were massacred in the Dahmash Mosque in Lydda. Most of the inhabitants of Lydda and Ramle marched under the sun after being ordered to go to King Abdullah. Three hundred fifty lost their lives on the way through dehydration and sunstroke.
1948, 16 July: The town of Nazareth fell into Israeli hands. A delegation of Christian clerics came out to meet the conquerors. Their request that the civilian population should not be forced to evacuate was granted. When Abraham Yaffe, an Israeli officer, entered Nazareth, he met a man whom he had driven out of another town in the Galilee. “Have you come to turn us away again?” the Arab inquired. “No, not in Nazareth,” Yaffe answered, “Nazareth is a holy place, a holy town. The world is watching us. You are not going to be a victim here.”
Israeli behavior in Nazareth was different from their behavior in the other Palestinian towns and villages. They realized that expulsion of Christian Arabs in one of the holiest Christian locations would produce unfavorable headlines all over the Western world. And so the 14,000 people of the town were allowed to remain.
There were clear orders to the Israeli forces to restraint in the hometown of Jesus. Chaim Laskov, the Israeli commander, recalled, “We had specific instructions not to harm anything, which meant that we had to take Nazareth by stratagem”.
Indeed, Ben-Gurion ordered that when the town was taken unauthorized soldiers should not be allowed into Nazareth and that the army should avoid 'any possibility of looting and desecration of churches and monasteries.'
“Nazareth was the exception that proved the rule”.
1948, 20 July: Stolen Palestinian lands were distributed among Jewish settlements. Arabs who did not leave the country were placed under Military Government, and their freedom to move freely outside their villages was severely curtailed. The Military Government and local IDF units found it simplest to forbid in toto Arab cultivation of fields. At the same time, Jewish settlements began to cultivate fields of Arabs who had remained in the State.
1948, 24 July: Ignoring the cease-fire ordered by UN Security Council Resolution # 54, Operation Policeman (mivtza shoter) was launched against the ‘little triangle’ of the three villages of Jaba, Ijzim and Ein Ghazal about 20 kilometers south of Haifa. Small units of the Golani, Carmeli and Alexandroni brigades captured the three villages on 26 July, with almost all the inhabitants being forced to leave.
1948, 16 August – early October: Negev and Yiftach brigades attacked and expelled Bedouins and inhabitants of villages in the Negev.
1948, 24-28 August: Giv’ati brigade launched Operation Nikayon (cleansing) and occupied coastal area west of Yibna and North of Isdud.
1948, 15 September: Bernadotte submitted his report to the UN Security Council.
1948, 17 September: Bernadotte was assassinated by the Stern Gang. The triumvirate that ordered the assassination of the UN mediator included Yitzhak Shamir, the future Prime Minister of Israel. Bernadotte was replaced by his deputy Ralph Bunche.
1948, 20 September: Bernadotte’s proposals to end the conflict were published. He made it clear that “no settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the Arab refugee to return to his home”.
1948, 15 October: Israel broke the cease-fire and launched an attack on the Egyptian forces in the south, which ended with Israel in control of the entire Negev.
1948, 29 October: Operation Hiram was launched to occupy the remaining parts of upper Galilee and drive out its inhabitants. A massacre was committed in the Palestinian village of Safsaf were 70 civilians were killed in cold blood one after the other. The Israeli forces conducted looting, rape, and forcible expulsion of women, children and the elderly.
1948, 30 October: The Israeli forces entered Eilaboun. Its 750 people, all of whom were Christian, took refuge in the two local churches where yellow and white flags of submission were flown. Marcos Daoud, the Greek Catholic priest, approached the Israelis saying “I put my village under the protection of the State of Israel”. The Israeli answer was as follows: Thirteen young men were murdered, the surviving young men were taken as prisoners, the women and children were marched off to the Lebanese border under severe conditions that resulted in many casualties, and looting and desecration of the churches followed the evacuation of the village.
1948, 16 November: The Security Council resolution # 62 called upon the parties directly involved in the conflict in Palestine to seek agreement for an armistice.
1948, 11 December: UN General Assembly resolution # 194 was adopted, which resolved that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return”. Moreover, the resolution established a Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC) to assume the functions given to Bernadotte.
On 1 April 1949, the PCC set up a Technical Committee on Refugees to workout measures for implementation of the provisions of UN resolution # 194 and called for an international conference at Lausanne where, under the PCC chairmanship, the parties could discuss the whole range of issues – refugees, Jerusalem, borders, recognition – and hammer out a comprehensive peace settlement.
1948, 22 December:Operation Horev was launched to drive the Egyptian forces out of Palestine and to compel the Egyptian government to negotiate an armistice. The Israeli troops surged forward, expelled the Egyptians from the southeastern flank of the Negev, brought strong pressure to bear on the Gaza Strip, but failed to liquidate the Egyptian enclave in Faluja. Mass murder and flight of the civilians was repeated in this operation. A massacre was committed in Dawayma where 100 - 150 people, including women and children, were slaughtered without mercy in the mosque of the village.
1949, 4 January: Egypt announced her readiness to begin armistice negotiations. The UN-decreed cease-fire went into effect on 7 January, marking the formal end of the war. Armistice negotiations between Israel and the neighboring Arab states got under way with the help of the UN acting mediator, Dr Ralph Bunche, at the Roses Hotel in Rhodes.
Armistice Agreements were signed with Egypt on 24 February, with Lebanon on 25 March, with Transjordan on 3 April, and with Syria on 20 July1949.
As a result of the war, 530 villages were bulldozed, 11 urban neighbourhoods were destroyed, about 10,000 Palestinian Arabs were killed, about 30,000 were wounded, and over 750,000 were ethnically cleansed and became refugees.
1949, 5 March: One day after the start of the official armistice negotiations with Jordan, Israel launched Operation Uvda (Fait Accompli) to extend its control of the southern Negev down to Eilat.
1949, 26 April: The PCC conference was opened in Lausanne, Switzerland.
1949, 11 May: Israel was admitted to UN membership.
1949, 12 May: The Arab states and Israel signed a protocol stating that the UN Partition Resolution and the partition map included in it constituted the basis for negotiations.
1949, 29 May: Ben-Gurion explained to his cabinet members that time had worked to Israel’s advantage with respect to borders, refugees and Jerusalem. He stated that, with the passage of time, the world would get used to Israel’s existing borders and to Israel’s position with respect to the Palestinian refugees. He added that the same was true for Jerusalem and people are beginning to see the absurdity of establishing an international regime over the city.
1949, 6 July: Israeli Consul General in New York, Arthur Lourie, transmitted a copy of a letter from American journalist Drew Pearson, whom Lourie said, “expressed anxieties characteristic of a large section of American opinion on whose support we have hitherto been able to count.”
Pearson had written that “in preventing Arab refugees from returning to their native land, the Jews may be subject to the same kind of criticism for which I and others have criticized intolerant Gentiles… Now we have a situation in which the Jews have done to others what Hitler, in a sense, did to them!”
1949, 14 July: Ben-Gurion recorded in his war diary that Abba Eban, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, “sees no need to run after peace. The armistice is sufficient for us; if we run after peace, the Arabs will demand a price of us – borders or refugees or both. Let us wait a few years.”
1949, 18 July: In an interview with Kenneth Bilby, the correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune, Ben Gurion stated, “I am prepared to get up in the middle of the night in order to sign a peace agreement-but I am not in a hurry and I can wait ten years. We are under no pressure whatsoever.”
1949, 12 September: The PCC Lausanne conference ended without any results.
1949, December: UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that called for treating Jerusalem as a separate entity and placing it under UN rule. In response, Ben-Gurion decided to move the Knesset and the government offices from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
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