In this essay, I will argue that Plan Dalet was a military strategy aimed at protecting Israel from invading Arab states, unintentionally resulting in an ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. I will start by analyzing the Palestinian perspective of Plan D as compared to the Palestinian perspective. Next I will describe the historical context of the 1948 war and the events leading up to the implementation of Plan Dalet. Lastly I will describe the specifics of Plan Dalet itself in order to point to the long lasting implications it has had on the Palestinians.
It goes without saying that the Palestinian perspective of Plan Dalet remains quite different to that of the Israeli’s. At the heart of the controversy surrounding the events of Plan Dalet, at least how I interpret it, is over its intent. Proponents of Plan Dalet point to its strategic purpose, specifically maintaining the …show more content…
Plan Dalet itself took six months to complete and resulted in the uprooting of over half of the native Palestinians. Over 750,000 Palestinians left their homes, over 500 villages had been destroyed and Palestinian communities that had existed for decades were systemically vacated. However, the Palestinians and Jews have very different conceptions of the Palestinian exodus and its consequences today. The Palestinians maintain that they were forcibly removed and expelled from their houses and communities. On the other hand, the Israeli narrative claims that the majority of Palestinians left willingly and accepts no responsibility for the