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Plan Dalet

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"Plan D" redirects here, plan D is also a democracy plan for the European Union by Commissioner Wallström.

Plan Dalet, or Plan D, (in Hebrew, dalet is the fourth letter, similar to "d" in English), was a plan that the Haganah in Palestine worked out during autumn 1947 to spring 1948. The purpose of the plan was, according to its Jewish planners, a contingency plan for defending a Jewish state from invasion. According to Yoav Gelber, Plan D was primarily defensive in nature. According to other sources it was a plan with the purpose of conquering as much of Palestine as possible and to expel as many Palestinians as possible (see 'Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine', by Walid Khalidi, for example).

Purpose of Plan Dalet

The introduction states:

a) The objective of this plan is to gain control of the areas of the Hebrew state and defend its borders. It also aims at gaining control of the areas of Jewish settlements and concentrations which are located outside the borders (of the Hebrew state) against regular, semi-regular, and small forces operating from bases outside or inside the state.

This passage has been interpreted to mean that Plan Dalet was not really of defensive nature, and that the founders of the Jewish state intended to disregard the 1947 UN Partition plan and secure positions outside the partition plans borders. The Jewish historian Ilan Pappe found confirmation of this in the diaries of Ben Gurion. In his book 'The ethnic Cleansing of Palestine' he quotes Ben Gurion writing the commanders of the Haganah Brigades on 11 May 1948 that 'the cleansing of Palestine remains the prime objective of Plan Dalet'.

The Plan states :"Generally, the aim of this plan is not an operation of occupation outside the borders of the Hebrew state. However, concerning enemy bases lying directly close to the borders which may be used as springboards for infiltration into the territory of the state, these must be temporarily occupied and searched for hostiles according to the above guidelines, and they must then be incorporated into our defensive system until operations cease."

In Section 3b4 the plan proscribes offensive operations to be carried out to consolidate the defensive system:

Mounting operations against enemy population centers located inside or near our defensive system in order to prevent them from being used as bases by an active armed force. These operations can be divided into the following categories:
Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously.
Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search7 inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.
The villages which are emptied in the manner described above must be included in the fixed defensive system and must be fortified as necessary.
In the absence of resistance, garrison troops will enter the village and take up positions in it or in locations which enable complete tactical control. The officer in command of the unit will confiscate all weapons, wireless devices, and motor vehicles in the village. In addition, he will detain all politically suspect individuals.

Depending on the interpretation of 'near our defensive system' section 3b4 can either be interpreted as defensive or, since 90 percent of Palestine lay within 30 km of the Jewish Mandate area, as extremely offensive. Furthermore the measures to be taken in the absence of resistance could easily provoke resistance, providing an excuse for expulsion. The actual purpose of Plan Dalet depended on the interpretation of the plan by the Jewish leadership. It gave local commanders, whom it was distributed to, authorisation for expulsion anytime they encountered resistance.

Walid Khalidi (General Secretary of the Institute for Palestine Studies) offered this interpretation in an address to the American Committee on Jerusalem:

As is witnessed by the Haganah's Plan Dalet, the Jewish leadership was determined to link the envisaged Jewish state with the Jerusalem corpus separatum. But the corpus separatum lay deep in Arab territory, in the middle of the envisaged Palestinian state, so this linking up could only be done militarily.

Benny Morris gives the following interpretation:

The essence of the plan was the clearing of hostile and potentially hostile forces out of the interior of the territory of the prospective Jewish State, establishing territorial continuity between the major concentrations of Jewish population and securing the future State's borders before, and in anticipation of, the invasion [by Arab states]. The Haganah regarded almost all the villages as actively or potentially hostile[1]
[Plan Dalet] constituted a strategic-doctrinal and carte blanche for expulsions [from villages that resisted or might threaten the Yishuv] by front, brigade, district and battalion commanders (who in each case argued military necessity) and it gave commanders, post facto, formal, persuasive cover for their actions.[2]

According to the French historian Henry Laurens, the importance of the military dimension of plan Dalet becomes clear by comparing the operations of the Jordanian and the Egyptian armies. The ethnical homogeneity of the coastal area, obtained by the expulsions of the Palestinians eased the halt of the Egyptian advance, while Jewish Jerusalem, located in an Arab population area, was encircled by Jordanian forces.[3]

Execution of Plan Dalet

Plan Dalet was executed in April and May 1948. According to Khalidi[4], the timing of the operations was mainly dictated by the British withdrawal, the Yishuv conquering and holding territory in their wake, and the need to finish before the expected attack of Arab countries after 15 May.

According to Morris the execution of Plan Dalet started in early April. The Alexandroni Brigade operated in the coastal plane between and around Tel-Aviv and Haifa. 'Elsewhere, Haganah Brigades unleashed offensives and counter-offensives in the spirit of Plan D without quite realising that this was what they were doing. But in Operation Nahshon (2-3 April - 20 April), in the Jerusalem Corridor, and, to the north, in the battles of Mishmar Ha'emek (4-15 April), Ramat Yohanan (12-16 April), Arab Tiberias (16-18 April) and Arab Haifa (21-22 April), Operation Yiftah, in eastern Galilee (15 April - 15 May), and Operation Ben Ami (parts I and II), in western Galilee (13-22 May), the Haganah, for the first time, systematically conquered and emptied of inhabitants (and often levelled) whole clusters of villages, clearing lines of communication and border areas.'[5] Operation Nachshon was the first large scale Haganah operation and thus many view it as a part of Plan D. However; Yitzhak Levi, head of the Jerusalem Shai (Hagannah intelligence service) did not include operation Nachshon in his account of the implementation of Plan D in his book, Nine Measures (in Hebrew, Tish'a Kabin).

The table below shows an overview with some specifics of the operations included in Plan Dalet according to Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi. He points out that eight of these operations were carried out "outside the area given by the UN to the Zionists".[6]. The goals he gives for the operations are highly controversed and correspond to his analysis.

Operation Start date goal result
Operation Nachshon 1 April to carve out a corridor connecting Tel Aviv to Jerusalem defeated
Operation Harel 15 April a continuation of Nachshon but centered specifically on Arab villages near Latrun defeated
Operation Misparayim 21 April to capture Haifa and rout its Arab population successful
Operation Chametz 27 April to destroy the Arab villages round Jaffa successful
Operation Jevussi 27 April to isolate Jerusalem by destroying the ring of surrounding Arab villages defeated
Operation Yiftach 28 April to purify eastern Galilee of Arabs successful
Operation Matateh 3 May to destroy Arab villages connecting Tiberias to eastern Galilee successful
Operation Maccabi 7 May to destroy the Arab villages near Latrun and to penetrate into Ramalah district defeated
Operation Gideon 11 May to occupy Beisan and drive away the semi-sedentary Bedouin communities in the neighbourhood successful
Operation Barak 12 May to destroy the Arab villages in the neighbourhood of Bureir on the way to the Negev partially successful
Operation Ben Ami 14 May to occupy Acre and purify western Galilee of Arabs successful
Operation Kilshon 14 May to occupy the Arab residential quarters in the New City of Jerusalem successful
Operation Schfifon 14 May to occupy the old city of Jerusalem defeated

Footnotes

  1. ^ Morris, 2004, 'The Birth ... Revisited', p. 164
  2. ^ Morris, 2004, 'The Birth ... Revisited', p. 165
  3. ^ Henry Laurens, Paix et guerre au Moyen-Orient, Armand Colin, 2005, p.92.
  4. ^ W. Khalidi, 1988
  5. ^ Morris, 2004, 'The Birth ... Revisited'
  6. ^ W. Khalidi, 1988

References

  • W. Khalidi, ‘Plan Dalet: master plan for the conquest of Palestine’, J. Palestine Studies 18 (1), 1988, p. 4-33 (published earlier in Middle East Forum, November 1961)

See also

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