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Abstract
One outcome of the Jewish–Arab conflict at the time of the British Mandate was the Arab refugee problem. It usually accompanied any escalation in hostilities and was evident at foci of the friction between Arabs and Jews. Reprisals by the authorities against the Arab population was an additional cause. At the time of the Arab Revolt the refugee issue assumed for the first time significant proportions as a result of destructive actions by the British army, the greatest being the home demolition operations unleashed in Jaffa. As a result many families became refugees inside and outside their city. For the first time in the Mandate period the British government was obliged to contend with the problem of Arab refugees that it itself had created, and resolve it. The article aims to shed light on a unique operation by the Mandatory government intended to establish a locality to house Arab refugees, which was implemented and completed in the Mandate period. The article shows that for the authorities the establishment of a quarter for refugees was the required and most appropriate solution to the problem that had arisen.
Notes
Notes
1 Y. Porath, The emergence of the Palestinian–Arab national movement 1929–1939 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 1978), pp.212–233 [Hebrew].
2 B.Z. Dinur, Sefer Toledot Hahagana [A History of the Hahagana] (Tel Aviv: Hasifriya Hatziyonit and Hotza'at Ma'arakhot, 1959), p.326 [Hebrew].
3 In the absence of data, the number of Arab refugees is difficult to estimate. For the number of Jewish refugees, by contrast, detailed data is available, reported by support organizations; the Arabs had no such organizations. The Arabic press refrained from giving numbers, apparently for fear of demoralization. As a rule it preferred to draw attention to the problem of the Jewish refugees.
4 The issue of Jewish refugees under the Mandate has to date benefited from several studies, which usually center on a particular case. For example, see A. Golan, 'Accommodation for Jewish refugees from Tel Aviv at the time of the Great Arab Revolt', Aley Zait Vacherev, Vol.5 (2004), pp.56–82 [Hebrew]; A. Kidron, 'The impact of the 1929 riots on Haifa and Jaffa/Tel Aviv: A comparison', Israel, Vol.22 (2014), pp.86–93 [Hebrew].
5 For example, see B. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947–1949 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 1991) [Hebrew]; N.C. Levinovsky, Jewish Refugees in Israel's War of Independence (Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 2014) [Hebrew]; A. Golan, 'Jewish Refugees in Eretz Israel during the War of Independence', Yahadut Zemanenu, Vol.8 (1993), pp.217–42 [Hebrew].
6 On the consequences of the internal struggle for Palestinian society, see Y. Arnon Ohanna, The internal struggle within the Palestinian movement 1939–1929 (Tel Aviv: Hadar publishing, 1989), pp.279–87 [Hebrew].
7 Ha'aretz, 14 Nov. 1938; Haboker, 8 Dec. 1938; The Palestine Post, 8 Dec. 1938; Haboker, 11 Dec. 1938; Davar, 12 Dec. 1938; Hamashkif, 31 Jan. 1939.
8 T. Goren, Rise and Fall: The Urban Development of Jaffa and its Place in Jewish-Arab Strife in Palestine 1917–1947 (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 2016), pp.361–2 [Hebrew].
9 On this operation, see D. Gavish, 'The Old City of Jaffa, 1936 – A Colonial Urban Renewal Project', Eretz-Israel, Vol.17 (1984), pp.66–73 [Hebrew].
10 For the background to the evacuation of Ard al-Ramel and the re-planning of the new quarter, see T. Goren, 'Efforts to Establish an Arab Workers' Neighborhood in British Mandatory Palestine', Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.42 (2006), pp.64–69.
11 Nothing has been written about the background to the establishment and building of the neighborhood other than a few references indicating the existence of a plan for the settlement of refugees from the Old City. See Gavish, 'The Old City', p.70; D. Gavish, 'Jaffa's Garden Suburb – The Obliteration of a Town Planning Scheme', Studies in the geography of Israel, Vol.14 (1993), pp.147–8 [Hebrew].
12 On the building and settlement of the neighborhood, see Goren, 'Efforts to Establish', pp.72–74.
13 The assumption stems from the fact that the Jaffa refugees were resident Palestinian citizens, while the Ard al-Ramel refugees were mostly migrant workers who were not residents of the place. The implications of the military operation for the legal system also greatly intensified the need to find a solution at once. On the legal problems, see Y. Eyal, The first Intifada: The oppression of the Arab Revolt by the British Army 1936–1939 (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1998), pp.110–3 [Hebrew].
14 For data on the Jewish refugees of the riots of 1921, 1929 and the disturbances of 1933, see Goren, Rise and Fall, pp.35, 123-124, 171, 173; A. Golan, 'War, Violence, and Urban Change: The Case of Tel-Aviv', Horizons in Geography, Vol.77 (2011), pp.31–32 [Hebrew].
15 For data on the Jewish refugees and their treatment, see Report from the Tel Aviv municipality, 1936, Central Zionist Archives (CZA) S25/5873; Golan, 'War, Violence', pp.33-34; Golan, 'Accommodation for Jewish', pp.56–82.
16 B.Z. Dinur, Sefer Toledot Hahagana [A History of the Hahagana] (Tel Aviv: Hasifriya Hatziyonit and Hotza'at Ma'arakhot, 1964), p.636 [Hebrew].
17 Al-Difa, 23 Apr. 1936; Intelligence report of the Hahagana, 23 Apr. 1936, Hagana Archives (HA) 41/21; Falastin, 24 Apr. 1936.
18 Assem al-Said to the Hebrew Community Committee, no date, CZA S25/5936; Ha'aretz, 10 May 1936.
19 Report from the Committee for Refugee Matters of Tel Aviv municipality, May 1936, Municipal Archives of Tel Aviv (TAMA) 4/167.
20 On the strike at the port and its effects, see T. Goren, 'The Struggle to Save the National Symbol: Jaffa Port from the Arab Revolt Until the Twilight of the British Mandate', Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.51 (2015), pp.865–7.
21 On the preparations for the operation, see Eyal, The First Intifada, pp.90–91.
22 Official notice number 115/36, 16 Jun. 1936, Israel State Archives (ISA) 2/566/7.
23 Notice, 16 Jun. 1936, HA 8/38.
24 Official Notice number 117/36, 16 Jun. 1936, ISA 2/566/7.
25 Davar, 16 Jun. 1936; Haboker, 16 Jun. 1936.
26 Official Notice number 120/36, 17 Jun. 1936, ISA 2/566/7.
27 Al-Difa, 17 Jun. 1936.
28 Falastin, 18 Jun. 1936; Al-Difa, 21 Jun. 1936; Falastin, 30 Jun. 1936. At the end of 1936, the newspaper Falastin became engaged in distributing a booklet containing caricatures and drawings intended to depict the stages of British rule in view of the Arab uprising. Some of the drawings centered on showing the destruction of the Old City, while pointing a finger of blame at the British. See 'The Palestine Case', 1936, HA 37/40/1.
29 Without a precise count of the buildings destroyed their exact number cannot be given. It can only be an estimate, which puts the figure at more than 100 ruined buildings. Based on a 1949 report of Tel Aviv municipality, it transpires that the number of buildings in Old City was then 458. See Report from the Tel Aviv municipality, 15 Jul. 1949, TAMA 4/2242. If we add to this the number of buildings destroyed in 1936, the number within the Old City before the operation stood at about 550. That is, one fifth of the buildings were destroyed.
30 Apparently, this was the first military operation in the country that had precise coverage in real time stage by stage. Press reporters and photographers assembled in Jaffa to cover and report on the action. A large collection of pictures that preserves the dimensions of the destruction and the clearing of the debris is kept in the Israel State Archives. See ISA 12/4141/5. The British also acted to document the operation for their own purposes, among other means by series of aerial photographs. For a view of the aerial photography, see Gavish, 'The Old City', p.69.
31 Eyal, The First Intifada, p.109.
32 Al-Difa, 19 Jun. 1936.
33 Do'ar Hayom, 18 Jun. 1936; Do'ar Hayom, 19 Jun. 1936.
34 Falastin, 19 Jun. 1936.
35 Haboker, 28 Jun. 1936; Ha'aretz, 29 Jun. 1936.
36 Reports from the Arabic newspapers, Jun. 1936, HA 37/37/7.
37 Haboker, 1 Jul. 1936.
38 Falastin, 28 Jun. 1936; Al-Liwa, 29 Jun. 1936.
39 Ha'aretz, 28 Jun. 1936; Ha'aretz, 30 Jun. 1936; Ha'aretz, 3 Jul. 1936; al-Jamia al-Islamiyya, 7 Jul. 1936. See also Eyal, The First Intifada, pp.110-113; Gavish, 'The Old City', p.69.
40 Davar, 16 Jul. 1936.
41 Ha'aretz, 15 Jul. 1936; Davar, 7 Jul. 1936; The Palestine Post, 7 Jul. 1936.
42 Haboker, 22 Sep. 1936; Ha'aretz, 15 Nov. 1936.
43 Ha'aretz, 25 Nov. 1936; Davar, 26 Nov. 1936.
44 Ha'aretz, 13 Dec. 1936; Falastin, 27 Dec. 1936.
45 Ha'aretz, 10 Jan. 1937; Falastin, 9 Feb. 1937; Falastin, 1 Jul. 1937. On the master plan of the Old City, see Gavish, 'The Old City', p.70.
46 For example, see Falastin, 10 Jul. 1936. Payment of damages for destroyed homes became a weighty issue that greatly exercised the British government. Because of the damage caused and the nature of the operation, the authorities were for the first time obliged to formulate a clear policy on the matter. For wide-ranging 1936 correspondence on the matter, see The National Archives CO733/313/7.
47 Reports from the Arabic newspapers, Jul. 1936, HA 37/99/7.
48 The Palestine Post, 2 Jul. 1936.
49 Minutes of the meeting, 11 Aug. 1936, ISA 12/4141/5.
50 For the arrangements in preparation for the survey and its results, see Ibid.
51 Falastin, 13 Aug. 1936; Reports from the Arabic newspapers, 16 Aug. 1936, HA 37/99/8.
52 Falastin, 1 Oct. 1936; Davar, 2 Oct. 1936.
53 On 'Project N', see Gavish, 'Jaffa's Garden Suburb', pp.146–8. Project N was not realized, except for the sector earmarked for the Old City refugees.
54 Government of Palestine, Report on the administration of Palestine and Trans-Jordan for the year 1936, London 1937, pp.186–7.
55 On the development of the Bayit Vegan neighborhood from its founding until the mid-1930s, see Goren, Rise and Fall, pp.48–50, 135, 176.
56 The sobriquet 'southern neighborhoods' was applied to small neighborhoods built west of Miqveh Yisrael and south of the Jaffa-Jerusalem highway. This block consisted of the neighborhoods Bayit Vegan, which from 1937 was called Bat Yam, and also Shekhnat Am, Qiryat Avoda and Shekhunat Agrobank, which in 1941 were together given the name Holon.
57 Letter from the Beit Vegan Association to the Jewish Agency, 25 Oct. 1936, CZA S25/7247.
58 The setting for the demand for annexation was the municipality's wish to expand southward, a process intended as a counterweight to the intentions of Tel Aviv municipality to change the municipal boundary between itself and Jaffa by annexing Jaffa's Jewish neighborhoods to Tel Aviv. For a detailed discussion of the initiatives intended to expand the Jaffa area southward, see T. Goren, 'Jaffa and the Question of Encirclement: The struggle over the City's Borders at the End of the Mandate Period', The New East, Vol.57 (2018), pp.58-60 [Hebrew].
59 Shikun Co., A Company for Workers' Residences Ltd, to Moshe Shertok, 10 Nov. 1936, CZA S25/5936.
60 Report from Moshe Shertok, 2 Nov. 1936, HA 80/153/10.
61 Letter from the southern neighborhoods to the District Commissioner, 12 Nov. 1936, CZA S25/5936.
62 Shikun Co. to the Jewish Agency Executive, 24 Jan. 1937, CZA S25/5936.
63 On the attempts and the results, see southern neighborhoods to the Chief Secretary, 1937, CZA S25/7247.
64 Letter from the District Commissioner to the Chief Secretary, 21 Jul. 1937, ISA 12/4141/6.
65 Zalman Lifshitz, Advisor to the Directorate of the Jewish Agency on Boundary Affairs, to the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, 1 Jun. 1938, CZA S25/3627.
66 Letter from the Bat Yam Local Council to the Jewish Agency, 12 Jul. 1938, CZA S25/7247.
67 Letter from Moshe Shertok to the Bat Yam Local council, 8 Aug. 1938, CZA S25/7247.
68 Letter from the District Commissioner to the Chief Secretary, 1 Oct. 1937, ISA 12/4141/6.
69 Letter from the District Commissioner to the Jaffa District Engineer, 31 Dec. 1938, ISA 12/4141/6.