Face‐Lifting Palestine: Early Western Accounts of the Palestinian Refugee Problem

Abstract

The traditional historical narrative on the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem argues that the large majority of Palestinian Arab refugees left their homeland voluntarily, acting upon the orders of their own political and military leaders. Historical research has been able to scrutinize these perceptions, and it can be demonstrated that the narrative of voluntary exile almost certainly originated in Israeli government circles during the early stages of the 1948 Israel–Palestine war. This paper analyses the publications of a large number of western witnesses of the 1948 war. While most of these writers stay well within the parameters of the traditional discourse, a few are more critical in their analyses of the causes of the Palestinian exodus. Many western eyewitnesses in Palestine understood human history as a redemptive process, and through this lens the “re‐establishment” of a Jewish state became a significant chapter in the natural and inevitable cumulative progress of western civilization. Within this frame of mind, the refugee problem was a relatively minor nuisance that should not hinder the admirable developments in Palestine spurred by the Zionist enterprise.