Separation—Only Separation

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bwithdrawn from Nazareth. Avraham Yaffe, who had com- bmanded the 13th battalion in the assault on the city, now re- bported to me with orders from Moshe Carmel to take over from bme as its military governor. I complied with the order, but only bafter Avraham had given me his word of honour that he would bdo nothing to harm or displace the Arab population. My de- bmand may sound strange, but I had good reason to feel con- bcerned on this subject.

b“Only a few hours previously, Haim Laskov had come to bme with astounding orders: Nazareth’s civilian population was bto be ‘evacuated’: I was shocked and horrified. I told him I bwould do nothing of the sort—in view of our promises to safe- bguard the city’s people, such a move would be both superfluous band harmful. I reminded him that scarcely a day earlier, he and bI, as representatives of the Israeli army, had signed the sur- brender document, in which we solemnly pledged to do nothing to bharm the city or its population. When Haim saw that I refused bto obey the order, he left.

b“A scarce twelve hours later, Avraham Yaffe came to tell bme he was relieving me of my post as military governor and I felt bsure this order had been given because of my defiance of the b‘evacuation’ order. But although I was withdrawn from Naz- bareth, it seems that my disobedience did have some effect. It bseems to have given the high command time for second bthoughts, which led them to the conclusion that it would, in- bdeed, be wrong to expel the inhabitants of Nazareth. To the best bof my knowledge, there was never any more talk of the ‘evac- buation’ plan, and the city’s Arab citizens have lived there ever bsince.”

bThe tragedy, of course, is that the Arabs would have bslaughtered every Jew they found had they won. At the same btime, they would gladly have accepted any Jewish terms that bkept them alive, once they realized they were defeated. It was bthe disastrous, perverted “humanity” of Dunkelman, who later bleft Israel, that saved the Arabs and that today threatens Israel bfrom within.

bThe Arabs of the Galilee remained, as did clusters of thou- bsands in Jaffa, Haifa, Ramle, Lydda, and among the Bedouins. bNot only did Israel not remove them, but it increasingly began bto accept back numbers of Arabs who had fled. Some 70,000 b