July 12 in History
1948 – Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion orders the expulsion of Palestinians from the towns of Lydda and Ramle
Between 50,000 to 70,000 Palestinian Arabs were expelled when Israeli troops captured the towns of Lydda and Ramle on this day in 1948. The two Arab towns, lying outside the area designated for a Jewish state in the UN Partition Plan of 1947, and inside the area set aside for an Arab state in Palestine, were subsequently transformed into predominantly Jewish areas in the new State of Israel and are now known as Lod and Ramla. The exodus, constituting “the biggest expulsion of the war”, took place at the end of a truce period, when fighting resumed, prompting Israel to try to improve its control over the Jerusalem road and its coastal route, which were under pressure from the Jordanian Arab Legion, Egyptian and Palestinian forces.
Once the Israelis were in control of the towns, an expulsion order signed by Yitzhak Rabin was issued to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) stating, “1. The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age….” Ramle’s residents were bussed out, while the people of Lydda were forced to walk miles during a summer heat wave to the Arab front lines, where the Arab Legion, Transjordan’s British-led army, tried to provide shelter and supplies. A number of the refugees died during the exodus from exhaustion and dehydration, with estimates ranging from a handful to a figure of 500.
The events in Lydda and Ramle accounted for one-tenth of the overall Arab exodus from Palestine, known in the Arab world as al-Nakba (‘the catastrophe’). Some scholars have characterized what occurred at Lydda and Ramle as ethnic cleansing. Many Jews who came to Israel between 1948 and 1951 settled in the refugees’ empty homes, both because of a housing shortage and as a matter of policy to prevent former residents from reclaiming them.
-Wikipedia
Photo Caption – Refugees being expelled from Ramla in July 1948 – Wikipedia