1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians

In this new collection of essays, three of which appear here for the first time, Benny Morris examines and elucidates aspects of the Arab exodus from Palestine in 1948, focusing on Israeli decision-making and the causes of the mass exile.

He deals with the transfer of Majdal's (Ashkelon's) Arabs to Gaza in 1950 and the initial absorption of the Palestinian refugees in the Arab host countries in 1948-9, and looks at why a number of Arab villages in key areas of Israel along the highways linking Tel Aviv with Jerusalem and Haifa did not go into exile voluntarily and were left in place by the Israeli authorities. He examines the attitudes towards the Palestinian Arabs, as they evolved during the 1948 war, of Israel's two main parties, Mapai and Mapam; how the battle for the harvest of 1948 affected the exodus; how the Israeli Defence Forces' Intelligence Service analysed the Arab exodus; and how Yosef Weitz, a Jewish National Fund official, and the two `Transfer Committees' he chaired, helped promote the Palestinian exodus during 1948-9.

In his introduction, Dr Morris examines past and present Israeli historiography, analysing the shift from the old' official Israeli histories to thenew history' of the 1980s. He identifies the major points of controversy between the two approaches and the direction in which Israeli historiography is now moving.