Plan Dalet: Master Plan For The Conquest Of Israel

The Palestinian exodus which occurred in 1948 is viewed by many in two distinctly different ways. For example, Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi views the events leading up to May 15 as having been a carefully calculated Zionist plot to expel Palestinians from their homeland. Among Arabs this expulsion is referred to as “Al-Nakba”, which, in Arabic, translates to “The Catastrophe.” Israeli historian Benny Morris argues that the flight was an externality which occurred because of military actions that were needed to secure a Jewish state in case of an Arab invasion. Fundamentally, Khalidi views “Al-Nakba” as a product of a meticulously crafted plan to force a Palestinian diaspora, while Morris contends that it was not premeditated and simply

The account he described is not necessarily historically inaccurate, but it does portray Plan Dalet as having the main objective and intention of a mass Palestinian exodus. Some expulsion was planned for, but the main goal was to a secure Hebrew state against an Arab invasion. Khalidi relies largely on the time period before 1948 in order to make his point; he portrays the Zionist goal of a Jewish state as being incongruent with having Arab citizens. Much of his evidence appears to be only circumstantial evidence pointing towards the deliberate expulsion of Arabs. In fact, the head of the Haganah National staff, Galili, was surprised by the mass exodus of Arabs from the cities and villages because he had not accounted for the “collapse and flight of Arab

Unlike Khalidi who examines the birth of Zionism and the events leading up to May 15, the day of withdrawal of British soldiers, Morris focuses on the threat of an Arab invasion in 1948. For example, early on Khalidi’s article he writes about Plan D having its “ideological premises” based on the concept of Zionism. He goes on to describe the position in which early Zionist were in, by arguing that they were faced with the problem of the indigenous population from the very beginning. Khalidi believes that zionist chose to supersede the indigenous people’s needs in order to solve the Jewish problem. Morris starts from a different point, he begins with the premise of an external threat, he says “The British evacuation, which would remove the last vestige of law and order in the cities and on the roads, was only weeks away, and the neighboring Arab states were openly threatening to intervene and invade Palestine.” Since both Khalidi and Morris start their arguments from two separate points, it is understandable why they see the events from two different