שוב ושוב מתעוררת השאלה: ערביי פלסטינה (א"י) ברחו, או גורשו? הסיפור, חלקו, אולי כולו, מתועד.
כמזכירת המחלקה הערבית של הסוכנות נפל בחלקי בכל בוקר לרשום בעברית ולהפיץ את מה שאנשי ה"ש"י" (שירות הידיעות של ההגנה) אז קלטו בערבית, בהאזנה לשיחות הטלפון של המופתי.
במו אוזני שמעתי את המופתי מייעץ לאוכלוסייה הערבית לקום ולברוח, שהרי ממילא בתוך זמן קצר יחזרו לבתיהם. חאג' אמין, המופתי, גם הוסיף כי סתימת הכבישים הראשיים בהמוני "בורחים" תחסום את המעבר בפני הכוחות היהודיים.
כל זה קרה בתקופה שבין החלטת האו"ם להכרזת העצמאות. האם שמרו בארכיון המדינה את התרשומת היומית המעניינת הזאת?
זאת ועוד, כידוע, אבא חושי, ראש העיר חיפה, הפיץ כרוז לערביי העיר בשפתם וקרא להם להישאר. רבים לא שעו לקריאתו ועשו את דרכם ללבנון. הכרוז הזה קיים בלי ספק בארכיון עיריית חיפה.
לא ידוע לי אם מפקדי כיבוש לוד ורמלה כתבו יומן מלחמה שנשמר. מותר לומר על הפליטים מהערים האלה, שהם גורשו.
אסתר הרליץתל אביב
Translation:
Again and again, the question arises: the Arabs of 'Palestina' (Eretz-Yisrael) fled or were they expelled? The story, partially and perhaps all, is documented.
As the Secretary of the Arab Department of the Jewish Agency, it was my job every morning to record in Hebrew and distribute what the Haganah's intelligence service, Shai, had taken down in Arabic, listening in to the telephone conversations of the Mufti.
I heard the Mufti advise the Arab population to rise and run, especially as they would in any case soon return to their homes. Haj Amin, the Mufti, also added that the blocking of highways by multitudes of those "fleeing" would then block the passage of the Jewish forces.
This all happened in the period between UN Partition Decision and Israel's Declaration of Independence. Would the state archives still possess these daily interesting protocols?
Moreover, as we know, Abba Hushi, the mayor of Haifa, issued a proclamation to the Arabs in their own language and called on them to stay. Many did not heed his call and made their way to Lebanon. This leaflet is without doubt in the Haifa municipal archives.
I do not know if the commanders who conquered Lydda and Ramleh preserved a battle log. It may inform us about the refugees of whom we can say were deported.
Esther Herlitz
Tel Aviv
Esther was a diplomat, becoming an Ambassador and was a Labour MK.
Well, where are those documents?
^
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1 comment:
This was in Haaretz in May. Hopefully the Haji recording wasn't destroyed but......
Thank you IM for a great blog
David
"What happened to the village files?
"Some of them were apparently destroyed in connection with 'Black Shabbat' [in June 1946, when the British arrested many of the Yishuv's leaders], for fear they would fall into the hands of the British, or they were hidden and not found afterward. Some of them were lost in the storm of the War of Independence. But there is no doubt that quite a few files survived the war. What became of them? I imagine that most of them were cleared out by intelligence officers."
Hilik Libal, who served as an intelligence soldier in IDF Central Command beginning at the end of 1950, told me what happened to the files of the Haganah from the villages that came under his responsibility. This information enables us to conjecture what befell other files, which were stored in the Northern and Southern Commands.
"After the establishment of the state, we continued to draw up files in enemy territory," Libal, now 80, said. "I was a field scout, an air scout and an analyst of aerial photographs in Central Command. We operated mainly in the West Bank. You have to remember that the austerity regime was in effect during the period of my service, and there was a shortage of everything, including cardboard cartons that were used to prepare intelligence files. So I took old cartons that the Haganah had used for the village files before the state's establishment and used them for the new intelligence files. As for the rest of the material that was in the old village files - maps, photographs, sketches and so forth - I burned it.
"For the most part, the files that were burned documented the Arab villages in the Jerusalem Corridor. We also destroyed the negatives of the aerial photographs. We sold the silver iodide they contained to raise money for the unit. Today I regret this. I don't remember if I acted on my own or at the order of my commander. But already at an early stage I realized what a mistake I had made. Therefore, after my discharge from the army I returned to intelligence as a civilian employed by the IDF. At first I served in the computer unit and afterward as a department head in the research division. Until my retirement, I worked hard to document and preserve history for future generations."
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/it-took-a-village-1.363015
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