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The Palestinian Druze in the 1947-1949 Arab-Israeli War
THE 1947-1949 ARAB-ISRAELI war is one of the most important and formative events in the history of the modern Middle East. The war has been the subject of much recent controversy, specifically between those historians now labeled "traditionalists" and "revisionists." The revisionists have sought to dismantle what they regard as the litany of myths surrounding the birth of Israel, one of which is that the Arab-Israeli conflict is and always has been a straightforward bipolar struggle. Recent revisionist scholarship has shown, however, that Israel was fully aware of the divisions that existed on the Arab side and that she used these divisions to serve her own political and military objectives. Examples of this are Israel's collusion with King `Abdallah of Jordan and her support for the Maronites in Lebanon.(1) However, both these alliances crossed international borders. What has not been addressed in any depth is whether this policy was reflected in the relationship between Israel and the different Palestinian Arab groups within Israel during the war. By showing that a political and military alliance existed between the Palestinian Druze and the Jews during the 1947-1949 Arab-Israeli war, this study throws more weight behind the revisionists `rejection of the traditionalists' picture of a solitary Israel faced by a monolithic and implacably hostile Arab camp.(2)
By the summer of 1949, in the aftermath of the war, the Palestinians faced a crisis. Many Muslim and a significant number of Christian Palestinians had lost their homes and their land and had sought refuge in neighboring Arab states. In contrast, the Palestinian Druze, having allied themselves with the Jewish side, retained possession of their homes and most of their land and some were even serving in the Israel Defense Forces. How and why did the alliance between Druze and Jews come into existence?
There is little secondary material on the subject. This study is based almost entirely on documentary material drawn from Israeli archives, and on memoirs of individuals involved in the events described.(3) A very informative and interesting article by Yoav Gelber, which appeared recently in Middle Eastern Studies, is the only other detailed treatment of this subject.(4) Although Gelber and I have drawn our narratives from roughly the same documentary...