Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle

Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle
Part of the 1948 Palestine war, the Nakba, and Operation Dani
An Israeli soldier with detained Palestinians in Ramle
LocationThe towns of Lydda and Ramle, then part of Mandatory Palestine, today part of Israel
DateJuly 10, 1948 (1948-07-10)-
July 14, 1948 (1948-07-14)
Attack type
Ethnic cleansing[1]
DeathsUnknown. Estimates range from hundreds to 1700
VictimsPalestinians
PerpetratorIsrael Defense Forces
50,000-70,000 Palestinians expelled

In July 1948, during the 1948 Palestine war, the Palestinian towns of Lydda and Ramle were captured by the Israeli Defense Forces and their residents (totalling 50,000-70,000 people)[2][3] were violently expelled. The expulsions occurred as part of the broader 1948 Palestinian expulsions and the Nakba. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in multiple mass killings, including the Lydda massacre and the Lydda Death March.[4][5] The two Arab towns, lying outside the area designated for a Jewish state in the UN Partition Plan of 1947, and inside the area set aside for an Arab state in Palestine,[6][7] were subsequently incorporated into the new State of Israel and repopulated with Jewish immigrants.[8] The towns today have the Hebrew names of Lod and Ramla.[9]

The exodus, constituting the biggest expulsion of the war,[10] took place at the end of a truce period, when fighting resumed, prompting Israel to try to improve its control over the Jerusalem road and its coastal route which were under pressure from the Jordanian Arab Legion, Egyptian and Palestinian forces. From the Israeli perspective, the conquest of the towns, designed, according to Benny Morris, "to induce civilian panic and flight",[11] averted an Arab threat to Tel Aviv, thwarted an Arab Legion advance by clogging the roads with refugees—the Yiftah Brigade was ordered to strip them of "every watch, piece of jewelry, or money, or valuables"[12]—to force the Arab Legion to assume an additional logistical burden with the arrival of masses of indigent refugees that would undermine its military capacities, and helped demoralise nearby Arab cities.[13][14]

Once the Israelis were in control of the towns, an expulsion order signed by Yitzhak Rabin was issued to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stating, "1. The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age....".[15] Ramle's residents were bussed out, while the people of Lydda were forced to walk miles during a summer heat wave to the Arab front lines, where the Arab Legion, Transjordan's British-led army, tried to provide shelter and supplies.[16] A number of the refugees died during the exodus from exhaustion and dehydration, with estimates ranging from a handful to a figure of 500.[17][18]

  1. ^ For the use of the term "ethnic cleansing," see:
    • Pappé 2006.
    • Spangler 2015, p. 156: "During the Nakba, the 1947 [sic] displacement of Palestinians, Rabin had been second in command over Operation Dani, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian towns of towns of Lydda and Ramle."
    • Golani and Manna 2011, p. 107[permanent dead link‍]: "The expulsion of some 50,000 Palestinians from their homes ... was one of the most visible atrocities stemming from Israel's policy of ethnic cleansing."
  2. ^ Slater 2020, "[...] violently expelled 50,000 inhabitants of the Palestinian towns of Lydda and Ramle."
  3. ^ Pappé 2006, "[...] expelled the populations of the two towns of Lydd and Ramla, altogether 70,000 people"
  4. ^ Chamberlin, P.T. (2012). The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order. Oxford Studies in International History. Oxford University Press. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-19-997711-6. Retrieved 26 November 2018. On a visit home in 1948, Habash was caught in the Jewish attack on Lydda and, along with his family, forced to leave the city in the mass expulsion that came to be known as the Lydda Death March.
  5. ^ Holmes, Richard; Strachan, Hew; Bellamy, Chris; Bicheno, Hugh, eds. (2001), The Oxford companion to military history, Oxford University Press, p. 64, ISBN 978-0198662099, On 12 July, the Arab inhabitants of the Lydda-Ramle area, amounting to some 70,000, were expelled in what became known as the Lydda Death March.
  6. ^ Roza El-Eini,Mandated Landscape: British Imperial Rule in Palestine, 1929–1948, Routledge 2006 p. 436
  7. ^ The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press 2004, p. 425.
  8. ^ That most of the immigrants to Lydda and Ramle were from Asia and North Africa, see Golan 2003. That refugees were settled in the empty homes to stop them from being reclaimed, see Morris 2008, p. 308, and Yacobi 2009, p. 45.
  9. ^ For population figures, see Morris 2004, p. 425, 434. He writes that, in July 1948 before the invasion, Lydda and Ramle had a population of 50,000–70,000, 20,000 of whom were refugees from Jaffa and the surrounding area (p. 425). All were expelled, except for a few elderly or sick people, some Christians, and some who were retained to work; others managed to sneak back in, so that by mid-October 1948 there were around 2,000 Palestinians living in both towns (p. 434).
    • For the name change, see Yacobi 2009, p. 29. Yacobi writes that Lod was Lydda's biblical name.
    • Palestinians called Lydda al-Ludd. Lydda was the Latin form of its name, which it was widely known by. See Sharon 1983, p. 798.
    • Ramle can also be written as Ramleh; it known as Ramla by the Israelis, and should not be confused with Ramallah, the administrative center of the Palestinian National Authority.
  10. ^ Benny Morris, The Palestine Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press 2004 p. 4.
  11. ^ Benny Morris, The Palestine Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press 2004 p. 425.
  12. ^ Benny Morris, "Was Israeli Looting in '48 part of a Broader Policy to Expel Arabs?", Haaretz 3 June 2021.
  13. ^ Cite error: The named reference case was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  14. ^ Rabin, Yitzhak; The Rabin Memoirs. University of California Press, 1996, p. 383: "Allon and I held a consultation. I agreed that it was essential to drive the inhabitants out. We took them on foot toward the Ben Horon road, assuming that the Arab Legion would be obliged to look after them, thereby shouldering logistic difficulties which would burden its fighting capacity, making things easier for us."
  15. ^ Morris, Benny (1987). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949. Cambridge Middle East Library. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 207. ISBN 978-0521338899.
  16. ^ Morris 2004, pp. 432–434.
    • Also see Gilbert 2008, pp. 218–219.
  17. ^ For the number of refugees who died during the march:
    • Morris 1989, pp. 204–211: "Quite a few refugees died – from exhaustion, dehydration and disease."
    • Morris 2003, p. 177: "a handful, and perhaps dozens, died of dehydration and exhaustion."
    • Morris 2004, p. 433: "Quite a few refugees died on the road east," attributing a figure of 335 dead to Muhammad Nimr al Khatib, who Morris writes was working from hearsay.
    • Henry Laurens, La Question de Palestine, vol.3, Fayard 2007 p. 145 states that Aref al-Aref set the figure at 500, among an estimated 1300 who died either in fighting in Lydda or on the march that ensued."Le nombre total dee morts se monte à 1 300:800 lors des combats de la ville, le reste dans l'exode.".
    • Khalidi 1998 Archived 23 July 2012 at the Wayback Machine, pp. 80–98: 350 dead, citing an estimate from Aref al-Aref.
    • Nur Masalha 2003, p. 47 writes that 350 died.
    For the IDF and Ben-Gurion's analysis of the effect of the conquest of the towns and the expulsions, see Morris 2004, pp. 433–434.
  18. ^ The death toll in Lydda:
    • Morris 2004, p. 426: 11 July—Six dead and 21 wounded on the Israeli side, and "dozens of Arabs (perhaps as many as 200)".
    • Morris 2004, p. 452, footnote 68: Third Battalion intelligence puts the figure at 40 Palestinians dead, but perhaps referring only to the numbers they had killed themselves.
    • Morris 2004, p. 428: 12 July—Israeli troops were ordered to shoot at anyone seen on the streets: during that incident, 3–4 Israelis were killed and around a dozen wounded. On the Arab side, 250 dead and many wounded, according to the IDF.