Just about two years ago, in late March 2024, Ronit Zilberman, a zoologist, was walking near her home in the Ramat Hahayal neighborhood of Tel Aviv when she noticed boxes with what she realized were thousands of documents that someone had left next to a dumpster.
One document that stood out among the papers that had been tossed into the garbage was written by Yitzhak Broshi, commander of Golani’s 12th Battalion in the war. It was an order from July 1948 that Broshi sent commanders of the brigade’s companies that were engaged in combat in the northern part of the country, titled “Conduct in captured villages where there is a population.”
The contents of this document are not the type of material one finds in Israeli history books.
Broshi informed the officers that after an Arab village was captured, identification certificates were to be issued to the inhabitants. If someone transferred their certificate to another person, both were to be shot. If someone did not report on time for military inspection, they were to be shot and their home was to be blown up.
In another order dated July 1948, Broshi instructed his troops to mount a search for Arabs who might have hidden in the Mount Turan area of the Lower Galilee, after the site had already been conquered. The order was: “Kill anyone who is hiding.”
Nearly 80 years have passed since the War of Independence, but much material in Israel’s archives remains classified. The country’s secrecy in this regard has left open one of the most fundamental questions relating to the war: whether close to 800,000 Arabs fled at their own initiative and at the directive of their leaders – or were expelled.
This rich resource, which was approved for publication by the Military Censor, sheds new light on the history of the Palestinian refugee question. Moreover, it completely dispels the Israeli narrative according to which the country’s Arab inhabitants fled of their own volition at the behest of their own leaders. Although some such instructions were indeed disseminated, and some people left at their own initiative – it can now be confirmed, on the basis of an impressive range of evidence, that the IDF expelled Arabs systematically and violently during the War of Independence. The expulsion was effected by massacres, murder and a variety of moves aimed at terrorizing this civilian population and expediting its flight.
