The New York Times Editorial Page, February 20, 2004
Of all the issues separating Israelis and Palestinians, nothing is more contentious than the Palestinian "right of return." Palestinian refugees say they must be permitted to go back to the lands they lost during the 1947-48 war inside what is today Israel. Even pragmatic Arabs who do not expect that Israel will ever permit large numbers of refugees to return believe that many Palestinians were pushed out of their homes through intimidation and force in a planned expulsion, and they believe that the right of return must be acknowledged, if not actually put into practice.
Israelis counter that the real aim of the right of return is to suffocate their state by flooding it with hostile Arabs — a sort of Trojan horse. Moreover, they argue, there is no historic sin that requires expiation because there was no Zionist plan to expel the Palestinians. They say that Zionist leaders urged the Palestinians to stay put, but that Arab leaders instructed them to leave so Arab armies would have a clear field.
In the Middle East, history is never a purely academic exercise. Evidence that Israeli forces drove out villagers at the point of a gun or that Palestinian leaders urged villagers to abandon their homes becomes not simply an interesting fact from the past but also a weapon in an ongoing struggle. One reminder of that is the current controversy over the Israeli historian Benny Morris.
There are few more prominent figures in the debate over the origin of the refugees than Mr. Morris, who in 1988 published "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem," a book that helped force Israelis to accept the idea that Palestinian expulsions did indeed occur. Now Mr. Morris is back with a new book that is a heavily revised and updated version of the 1988 account. Based on new Israeli documents, it adds more details of Zionist misdeeds, but also some pertinent new information shoring up the argument that the Palestinians were the authors of their own tragedy. And in the current climate of Palestinian suicide bombings and what he considers unyielding Palestinian rejectionism, Mr. Morris draws very different conclusions this time from his research.
The French philosopher Ernest Renan once said that a nation is "a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbors." Mr. Morris's new book suggests that both Israelis and Palestinians fit that description to some extent. The book reinforces central tenets of each side's narrative.
Mr. Morris has unearthed a number of small-scale Israeli massacres of Palestinians and about a dozen rapes by Israeli soldiers. He has also found much more talk among Zionist leaders — as well as among British and Jordanian leaders — of the desirability of transferring Palestinians off the contested land to avoid conflict. While this may not amount to the plan that Palestinians always charge existed, it offers support for that idea. Mr. Morris wrote that the Zionist leaders were far more focused on the idea of population transfer than he had ever realized. When expulsions occurred, he said, they did not object.
At the same time, Mr. Morris has found important evidence that Arab leaders really did encourage a Palestinian exodus. There is a September 1947 resolution by the Arab League calling on Arab states to accept Palestinian women and children and elderly Palestinians should fighting break out. And many Palestinian villagers were told by their leaders to send away vulnerable residents, prompting the men to leave as well. Tens of thousands of Palestinians fled as a result.
All of this suggests that the more you look into the history of this conflict, the grayer it becomes, and the more difficult it is to assign blame cleanly. Yet that is not the message that seems to be emerging. In an interview that caused an uproar in Israel, Mr. Morris told the newspaper Haaretz he now believed that "without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here." He also said, stunningly, that "there are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing."
This is in stark contrast with what he argued 15 years ago after unearthing details of transfers and massacres by Israelis. At the time, he said that recognizing Israel's role in the creation of the refugee problem was central for peace to come. His work, coming on the eve of the 1990's peace effort, was highly influential.
Mr. Morris, speaking by telephone from Jerusalem, says he is not defending massacres or rapes. He is simply arguing that they were not on a very large scale, compared with many other massacres in history. And, in looking at 1948 and the ongoing violence today, he can't help suspecting that if more Palestinians had been driven away then, there would be greater peace today.
All this suggests that while Mr. Morris is an important historian, he is a less clear-eyed political analyst. It also shows just how far public discourse in Israel has moved in a few years.
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