'Transfer' (Ethnic Cleansing) Zionist Quotes
on August 7, 1937 he also stated to the Zionist Assembly during their debate of the Peel Commission:
". . . In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the [Palestinian] Arab fellahin. . . it is important that this plan comes from the [British Peel] Commission and not from us. . . . Jewish power, which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out the transfer on a large scale. You must remember, that this system embodies an important humane and Zionist idea, to transfer parts of a people to their country and to settle empty lands. We believe that this action will also bring us closer to an agreement with the Arabs." (Righteous Victims, p. 143)
Ben-Gurion "had a dream" to annex southern Lebanon to the "Jewish state", and to establish a Christian state north of the Litani River. At the beginning of the 1948 war, he stated:
'The Muslims rule of Lebanon is artificial and easily undermined. A Christian state ought to be set up whose southern borders would be Litani River. Then we'll form an alliance with it." In the coming years he repeated this idea, and according to Moshe Sharett, Moshe Dayan (who was Israeli's chief of staff in the early 1950s) responded favorably to this idea and who according to Sharett said: "In his [Dayan] view, all we need to do is to find a Christian Lebanese officer, perhaps no higher than a captain, and win him over or buy him with money, so that he would declare himself the savior of Maronite population. Then the Israel army would enter Lebanon, occupy the territory in question and establish a Christian government which would form an alliance with Israel." Sharett himself considered this an "awful" idea. (1949, The First Israelis, p. 10 & Righteous Victims, p. 497)
On the same subject, Ben-Gurion wrote in 1937:
"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." (Righteous Victims, p. 144)
In 1938, Ben-Gurion made it clear of his support for the establishment of a Jewish state on parts of Palestine ONLY as an intermediary stage, he wrote:
"[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state--we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 107, One Palestine Complete, p. 403)
nd regarding the Peel Commission, on June 9, 1937 he also stated:
"In my opinion we must insist on the Peel Commission proposal, which sees in the transfer the only solution to this problem. And I have now to say that it is worthwhile that the Jewish people should bear the greatest material sacrifices in order to ensure the success of transfer." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 70)
In September 1937, he stated to a group of American Jewish labor leaders in New York:
"the borders [of the Jewish state] will not be fixed for eternity." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 188)
According to Sefer Toldot Ha-Haganah, the official history of the Haganah, it clearly stated how Palestinian villages and population should be dealt with. It stated:
"[Palestinian Arab] villages inside the Jewish state that resist 'should be destroyed .... and their inhabitants expelled beyond the borders of the Jewish state.' Meanwhile, 'Palestinian residents of the urban quarters which dominate access to or egress from towns should be expelled beyond the borders of the Jewish state in the event of their resistance.' " (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 178)
Ben-Gurion clearly never believed in static borders, but dynamic ones as described in the Bible. He stated during a discussion with his aides:
"Before the founding of the state, on the eve of its creation, our main interests was self-defense. To a large extent, the creation of the state was an act of self-defense. . . . Many think that we're still at the same stage. But now the issue at hand is conquest, not self-defense. As for setting the borders--- it's an open-ended matter. In the Bible as well as in our history, there all kinds of definitions of the country's borders, so there's no real limit. Bo border is absolute. If it's a desert--- it could just as well be the other side. If it's sea, it could also be across the sea. The world has always been this way. Only the terms have changed. If they should find a way of reaching other stars, well then, perhaps the whole earth will no longer suffice." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 6)
On September 26, 1948, he proposed the Israeli provisional government that Israel should attack the West Bank. Again, he had reiterated how a war could be used as an instrument to "transfer" population, and he used Lydda's and Ramla's occupation and the subsequent expulsion of their population as a precedent. According to a detail plan of the operation recorded in his diary, Israeli forces would take:
"Bethlehem, and Hebron, where there are about a hundred thousand [Palestinian] Arabs. I assume that most of the Arabs of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron would flee, like the [Palestinian] Arabs of Lydda, Jaffa, Tiberias, and Safad, and we will control the whole breadth of the country up to the Jordan." In another entry he writes: "It is not impossible . . . that we will be able to conquer the way to the Negev, Eilat, and the Dead Sea, and to secure the Negev for ourselves; also to broaden the corridor to Jerusalem, from north to south; to liberate the rest of Jerusalem and to take the Old City; to seize all of central and western Galilee and to expand the borders of the state in all directions" (emphasis added). (Simha Flapan, p. 48 & 1949, The First Israelis, p. 14)
Moshe Sharett, the first Israeli foreign minister, wrote in 1914:
We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it, that governs it by the virtue of its language and savage culture
In April 28, 1930 Menachem Ussishkin stated in an address to journalists in Jerusalem:
"We must continually raise the demand that our land be returned to our possession .... If there are other inhabitants there, they must be transferred to some other place. We must take over the land. We have a great and NOBLER ideal than preserving several hundred thousands of [Palestinian] Arabs fellahin [peasants]." (Righteous Victims, p. 141)
Soon after the 1967 war, Moshe Dayan wrote in his memories regarding the ethnic cleansing and destruction of the 'Imwas, Bayt Nuba, Yalu, and big portion of the West Bank city of Qalqilya:
"[houses were destroyed] not in battle, but as punishment . . . and in order to CHASE AWAY the inhabitants . . . contrary to government policy." (Righteous Victims, p. 328)
In September 1967 Moshe Dayan told senior staff in the Israeli Occupation Army in the West Bank that some 200,000 Palestinian Arabs had left the West Bank and Gaza Strip:
"we must understand the motives and causes of the continued emigration of the [Palestinian] Arabs, from both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and not to undermine these cause after all, we want to create a new map." (Righteous Victims, p. 338)
On 30 July 1973 Moshe Dayan said to Time Magazine:
"There is no more Palestine. Finished . . ." (Iron Wall, p. 316)
and in April 1973 from the peaks of Massada he proclaimed a vision:
"a new State of Israel with broad frontiers, strong and solid, with the authority of the Israel Government extending from the Jordan [river] to the Suez Canal." (Iron Wall, p. 316)