APPORTIONING BLAME:

The Lonely Historian: Benny Morris discusses the new version of his famously controversial book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, which has left him alienated from both the left and the right (Elizabeth Wasserman, March 25, 2004, Atlantic Unbound)

I want to ask you about the recent change in your politics, from a highly critical to a more pro-Israel view. How do you explain that?

Let me just say something up front: I don't really regard my views as having changed much.

I still believe that a territorial compromise is necessary, that a two-state solution is the only equitable solution here, and that Israel must withdraw from the territories. What has changed in my views is my perception of the Palestinian side during the past decade. Whereas in the 1990s I was fairly optimistic that the Palestinians had accepted in their hearts the need for a compromise and for a two-state solution, now I'm very doubtful. I don't think the Palestinians really want to agree to a two-state solution. They want a one-state solution, which means Israel's destruction and the turning of all of Palestine into one Arab majority state. That's what has changed in my thinking.

How has this influenced your thinking on the subject of transfer?

From my realization about the Palestinians stems a number of conclusions. If it is true that the Palestinians—historically, monolithically, continuously and probably forever—are disagreeable to a two-state solution, to the acceptance of Israel's existence, then one has to think afresh about the problem of demography and territory. And what this has led me to conclude is that in 1948, it would probably have been better for everybody to have had all the Palestinians cross the Jordan River rather than having many of them stay on the Israeli side at the end of the war. In other words, if Israel had been established on all the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River and the Palestinians had crossed the river and turned Transjordan into a state of their own, both peoples would have probably been happier, and the Middle East would certainly have been a pleasanter place over the next fifty years.

Do you have an idea of how and when this should have come about?

Well, there were expulsions and there was mass movement of population in '48 in the course of the war, and had this transfer occurred completely rather than partially, that would have been the right moment for it to occur, historically speaking—the only possible moment it probably could have occurred. Later it was already too late. The Palestinians were not going to move of their own volition; Israel was not going to kick anybody else out; and the opportunity for a complete separation between the two peoples, and the establishment of two states—one on each side of the Jordan—was lost.

In conducting research for Revisited you found a lot more evidence that the Arab leaders were partially responsible for promoting the evacuation. What is the significance of this? Should this information affect the Palestinian cause internationally?

It should translate in some way. Look, there is a connection between current policy on the Arab side—the demand for the right of return of the refugees to their homes and lands in Palestine—and the question of who is to blame for what happened in '48. There's sort of a formula here that essentially asserts that if the Israelis were by and large to blame for the displacement of the Palestinians, therefore they are guilty and must agree to a full-scale return of the refugees. On the other hand, if the Palestinians have more blame in the flight or the displacement of the Palestinians, their argument for a return of the refugees is diminished. So there is a political significance to the apportioning of blame

You have referred to Arab intellectuals' approach to the history of the Arab-Jewish conflict in the Middle East as hypocritical. Can you elaborate on this?

A lot of Arab critics have become hot and bothered about the so-called ethnic cleansing of Arabs in 1948. But they neglect to mention that ethnic cleansing is a sport long and consistently practiced by the Arabs, from Muhammad, who ethnically cleansed Arabia of its Jewish tribes back in the seventh century, down to the Arab world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which systematically cleansed their communities of Jews. Almost no Jews live in the Arab world today—in Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, etcetera. And, for that matter, there are very few Christian communities in the Arab world. The Arabs between the seventh and the twentieth centuries took care to expel them, massacre them, or forcibly convert them to Islam. An ethnic cleansing of giant proportions is currently under way in the Sudan, and has been for decades. No Arab historian I know of has ever studied or written about these events.

How has the change in your politics affected your relations with your leftist colleagues?

My relations have suffered as a result. Before the recent, as we think of it, change of heart, they were at least courteous. They were suspicious of my basic feeling because they always knew that I wasn't on the Arab side—I was never pro-Palestinian or pro-Arab, but at least I was producing a history that they enjoyed and made use of. But since I have made these statements blaming the Palestinians for much of what is going on, especially since the year 2000, they've been extremely hostile in print and I find that even my colleagues at the university don't say hello in the corridors. I'm talking about extreme leftists. So in some ways there is a beginning of an embargo or ostracism in the works. It isn't pleasant, but I think it's instinctive.

If you're a university professor and your colleagues are talking to you, it's time to worry.

MORE:
BEATING A PLOUGHSHARE INTO A SWORD (1/11/04)
POST-POST-ZIONISM (1/26/04)

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 27, 2004 9:42 AM