The Creation of Israel, the War of 1948-49 and the Suez Crisis of 1956 » Palestinian Refugees, the Law of Return and Border Raids

The Palestinian refugee problem

The fighting of 1947-49 changed the lives of ordinary people as well as the map. 'Disputed territorial claims' is one of the themes that run through this breadth study, and the refugees became one of the hardest disputes of all.

Key terms:

• Refugee: a person forced to leave their home, and often their country, because of war or danger.
• Refugee camp: a place set up to shelter people who have lost their homes. Many began as rows of tents.
• Law of Return: an Israeli law of 1950 giving Jews from anywhere in the world the right to settle in Israel.
• Reprisal: an attack carried out in revenge for an earlier attack.

Between 1947 and 1949 about 700,000 Palestinian Arabs left or were driven from the land that became Israel. They are the Palestinian refugees. There was no single cause, and historians still argue about how much each one mattered:

• War: villages and towns were fought over, and many families fled to escape the shelling and gunfire, expecting to return when it stopped.
• Loss of leadership: many wealthy and leading Arab families left early, so people in towns such as Haifa and Jaffa were left without leaders.

Some accounts say Arab leaders told people to leave. Many historians have found little evidence of a general order like this, so you should be careful before using it as a cause.

Life in the camps

Most refugees ended up in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, or in the neighbouring countries of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Many lived in camps, first in tents and later in small huts and houses. The camps were crowded, and there was little work for people who had lost their land and property. In 1949 the UN set up the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which began work in 1950. It gave the refugees food, schooling and health care.

The dispute over return

In December 1948 the UN General Assembly said that refugees who wished to return home and live in peace should be allowed to, and that the others should be paid compensation. The two sides disagreed about what should happen:

Israel did not allow the refugees back, and most of their land and houses came under Israeli control. The refugee problem was left unsolved, and it stayed at the centre of the conflict for decades.

The Law of Return, 1950

In July 1950 the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, passed the Law of Return. It said that Jews from anywhere in the world had the right to come to Israel to live. Israel had been founded as a home for Jewish people, and many Holocaust survivors in Europe still needed a place to go. Jews from Arab countries, such as Iraq and Yemen, also came in large numbers. In its first few years Israel took in about 700,000 Jewish immigrants, roughly doubling its Jewish population.

Border raids and reprisals

After the armistice of 1949 the borders between Israel and its neighbours were poorly marked and hard to guard. Many Palestinian refugees crossed them, often just to go home, collect belongings, or harvest crops from their old land. Some crossings were attacks, and some Israelis were killed by armed raiders.

Israel's government answered with a policy of reprisals. It hit back much harder than the original attack, hoping to make Arab governments stop the crossings. In October 1953 an Israeli unit led by Ariel Sharon attacked the village of Qibya in Jordan, after a mother and her two children had been killed in an Israeli town. 69 villagers were killed, many of them women and children. The UN Security Council condemned the attack. In February 1955 Israel attacked Egyptian forces in Gaza, and that helped push Egypt towards seeking arms from abroad. The raids and reprisals fed each other and made war more likely.

Change and continuity: terrorism in the 1940s and the 1950s

In the 1940s the violence was mostly carried out by armed groups such as the Irgun and Lehi, which were fighting the British Mandate. By the early 1950s the main violence was along the borders, between Palestinian refugees and Israel's army. What stayed the same was that civilians were killed and each act of violence led to revenge.

Exam-style question

Explain TWO ways in which the violence in Palestine in the 1940s was different from the border violence between Israel and its neighbours in the early 1950s. [6 marks]

Remember: one way on its own cannot score more than half marks, and each way must say something about both periods.