positioning, through the implementation of border corrections (based on
1949 armistice agreements) and displacement policies and practices of the
Israeli military government. Palestinian communities in the northern border
villages, the Naqab, the “Little Triangle” and in villages partially emptied during
the war were among the most significantly affected by internal population
transfer and expulsion. Between 1949 and 1966, Israel internally displaced
35,000 to 45,000 Palestinians.25 Israeli forces also transferred Palestinians to
new areas within its 1948 borders in order to break up the concentration
of Palestinian population centers, and to open up further areas for Jewish
settlements.
The ongoing displacement of Palestinian citizens of Israel has not stopped
since, as Israel continues to implement policies of land confiscation,
discriminatory planning and zoning, denial of services, and institutional
discrimination to further displace Palestinians from key strategic areas. In
recent years, there has been a clear ‘judaization’ policy in the Naqab and
the Galilee, two areas with significant Palestinian populations. Internally
displaced Palestinians inside Israel numbered 384,200 at the end of 2014.26
Many other Palestinians that remained inside Israel after 1948 became
refugees later on. Within days of the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli General
Armistice Agreement, some 2,000–3,000 Palestinians from the villages of alFallujah and Iraq al-Manshiyya27 were beaten, robbed and forced to leave their
homes by Israeli forces, despite stipulations in the armistice agreement that
nothing would befall their population after the Egyptian troops’ withdrawal.28
In 1950, Israel expelled the remaining 2,500 Palestinian residents of the city
of al-Majdal Asqalan (today’s Ashqelon) into the Egyptian-controlled Gaza
Strip.29 Between 1949 and 1956, more than 20,000 Palestinian Bedouins
were expelled from their indigenous lands, mostly located in the Naqab.30
Some 5,000 Palestinian Bedouin in the north, around the villages of Baqqara
and Ghannama, were expelled to Syria.31
25 BADIL, Survey 2013-2015, supra note 6, xxxi .
26 BADIL, Survey 2013-2015, supra note 6, 31.
27 al-Fallujah and Iraq al-Manshiyya were Palestinian villages in Mandatory Palestine, located 30
kilometers northeast of Gaza City.
28 Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987), 243.
29 Benny Morris, 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
30 Israeli Foreign Ministry reports indicate that some 17,000 Bedouin were expelled from the Naqab
between 1949 and 1953. Simon and Vermeersch, “Investigation Report”, UNA DAG-13/3.3.1–18,
quoted in Benny Morris, Israel’s Border Wars, 1949- 1956. Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and
the Countdown to the Suez War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
31 BADIL, Survey 2013-2015, supra note 6, xxxii .
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