Benny Morris and the Refugees

It has been more than a decade and a half since Benny Morris' book on the origins of the Palestinian Refugee Problem appeared, creating a storm in both the political and academic world that has not fully abated. His book has been attacked, analyzed, debated, used and abused by anyone and everyone with a stake in the Israel-Arab conflict, most notably those with pro-Palestinian sympathies.

To be sure, there had been other studies of the problem before him, most notably by Rony Gabbay, but none attracted as much attention, both in the academic and the political arenas, as Morris' work. So much so, that the name "Benny Morris" has become synonymous with the study of the Palestinian Refugee Problem.

Now Morris has republished and revised his original 1986 work, retitled "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited", and has promised "shocking" new revelations - including new information about massacres and even rape by Jewish forces - in a self-promotional and controversial interview in Ha'Aretz. (Interestingly, while the interview itself garnered a great deal of attention, there has been not a single review of the book itself - except a brief overview in The Atlantic, and a couple of angry rants by pro-Palestinian reviwers - in the six months since it has been released.)

This "new" book is certainly very well done - it is clearly written, the chapters are usually structured coherently, and the book as a whole appears scrupulously documented - there are often more than a hundred footnotes per chapter. Morris has also tried to make use of much of the new research on the subject, including the study of the capture of Lod in 1948 by Alon Kadish, Avraham Sela and Arnon Golan, as well as Yoav Gelber's "Independence VS Nakba". Each "wave" of refugees has a chapter dedicated to it, as well as chapters discussing "Transfer" thought among Jewish leaders, the decision to prevent the refugees' return, and the post-war negotiations regarding the refugees' fate.

The fact that Morris takes much care to stress the background of the war - including explaining the motive for raids as well as discussions of Arab and Palestinian-Arab policy as well as Jewish policy, an aspect that is almost always missing from most books on the war in general - is laudable. Though Morris still tries very hard to find guilt among Jewish leaders - especially "transfer" thinking (more on this below) - his explanations for the causes of each "wave" of refugees, are careful, reasoned and backed up by evidence.

This is the good news. The problem is that Morris still suffers from a number of obsessions that mar his judgment. The first is his obsession with 'transfer' thinking -the idea that the future Jewish state should have as few Arabs as possible and therefore should remove them. His attempt not only to 'prove' that transfer thinking was a central tenet of Zionist thougt but that it was 'in the air' during the priod of April-May 1948 (his 'second wave') are simply not convincing. Most of his 'evidence' for the former has been dealt with by scholars such as Yehoshua Porat and Efraim Karsh, and Joseph Heller dedicated much of his review essay of "Righteous Victims" to refuting (convincingly, in my opinion) the idea that Zionist leaders were obsessed with 'transfer'. I doubt that Heller would be convinced now.

Moreover, even if we were to assume that he is correct, Morris would still be at a loss to explain the almost total lack of documentary evidence of any kind for this kind of thinking among the junior and senior commanders supposedly responsible carrying out 'transfer' during this stage. The more logical assumptions - that they were to preoccupied with securing the Jewish areas militarily (the central idea of Plan D) and thus didn't really think about the Palestinian-Arab civilian population or that they perceived the Arabs as a possible 'fifth column' - are unaccountably dismissed, and without proper documentary support. This lack of evidence stands in contrast to the proven existence of such views during the later stages of the war (during Operation HIRAM) which Morris presents.

Another problem is Morris' attempt to yell 'fire' at every opportunity. Thus every possibility of a massacre is trumpeted, even if the source is doubtful or unstubstantiated (an Egyptian broadcast, a single letter of complaint). Every case in which the IDF censor disallows Morris to see material is scrupulously mentioned (this is also hypocritical since Morris was allowed to see quite a bit of damning material in the IDF Archives), insinuating that there is a smoking gun still off limits.

Moreover, every staement of Ben-Gurion, such as his description of Jerusalem at one point as the most Jewish since the Roman destruction, is siezed upon as a statement of a desire to see the Arabs kicked out. In general, Ben-Gurion comes off in Morris' book as the manipulator and mover behind the Arabs plight - especially in the case of the explusion of the Arabs from Lod and Ramle, which Morris sees as Ben-Gurion's responsibility - even though there are other possible culprits such as Yigal Alon (who didn't need BG's OK to kick out Arabs).

These and other preconceptions mar the book, and stand in stark contrast to Morris' usual care. It is likely that other reviewers more knowledgable than myself will point to other problems.

There are, moreover, a number of factors that will likely prevent Morris' work from once again becoming THE standard, even if one ignores its flaws. The first is that Morris' study is no longer the only one on the shelves. Various studies on the subject of the refugees have appeared, and will continue to appear - the most notable being Yoav Gelber's "Independence VS Nakba"- which add a great deal of information, and often clash with or at least differ from Morris' perspective. Second, it is quite likely that as more documentation is released, our picture will become ever more nuanced - it may even turn out that some of the massacre smoke had no fire behind it.

Nevertheless, Benny Morris' study is a worthy, if no longer exclusive, addition to perhaps the most vexing problem of the Arab-Israeli conflict. I only hope that it will be given the attention it deserves.