The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

March 6, 2009

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Israeli professor and historian Ilan Pappe is a serious and thoroughly documented work that belongs in every library. Ben-Gurion, from 1937 onward, had the ethnic cleansing of more than 80 percent of the Palestine Mandate as a goal. Plan Dalet specified how the Arabs were to be cleaned out of their villages. The journalist Uri Avnery, who was there, describes how it was done and how he received orders to kill any who tried to return. Pappe’s book also goes into the planning and methods employed prior to actual cleansing operations and notes how the same tactics and methods have been followed up to 2006. We can see these same tactics being repeated  in Gaza today.