The 1948 Palestine-Israel War is known to Israelis as ‘The War of Independence,’ but for Palestinians it will forever be the Nakba, the ‘catastrophe.’

Since the Holocaust, it has been almost impossible to hide large-scale crimes against humanity. In this age of mass communication, few modern catastrophes are concealed from the public eye. And yet, as Ilan Pappe unveils, one such crime has been erased from the global public memory: the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948. But why is it denied, and by whom? The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine offers an investigation of this mystery.

Alongside the creation of the State of Israel, the end of the war led to one of the largest forced migrations in modern history. Around a million people were expelled from their homes at gunpoint, civilians were massacred, and hundreds of Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed. Though the truth about the mass expulsion has been systematically distorted and suppressed, had it taken place in the twenty-first century it could only have been called ‘ethnic cleansing.’

In his new book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, prominent Israeli academic Pappe argues passionately that the denial of international recognition for this tragedy, and the refusal to allow the Palestinians the right to return to their homeland excludes from the peace process the essential foundation for a lasting peace in the Middle East and beyond. His groundbreaking and controversial work sheds new light on the origins and development of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, asking questions that the world has so far failed to ask to reveal the real story behind the events of 1948. Based on meticulous research, including recently declassified Israeli archival material, Dr. Pappe’s vivid and timely account demonstrates conclusively that ‘transfer’ - a euphemism for ethnic cleansing - was from the start an integral part of a carefully planned strategy, and lies at the root of today’s ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

The book contains a chronological list of key dates, starting with the first Zionist agricultural colony in Palestine in 1878 and ending with the events of 1949. It has maps detailing the partition of Palestine in its various stages and some telling photographs of Palestinian refugees fleeing their towns and villages, and of villages that were completely wiped out and on whose terrain Israeli towns now stand.

Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and senior lecturer of Political Science at Haifa University. He is also Academic Director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Haviva, and Chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies, Haifa. He is the author of a number of books, including A History of Modern Palestine, The Modern Middle East and The Israel/Palestine Question.

(Courtesy of the publisher)