Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948
Nur Masalha
Traces the idea of moving the Palestinians out — "transfer" — through six decades of Zionist political thought, using the movement's own archives, minutes and diaries.
From the beginning of the effort to found a Jewish national home in Palestine, its planners faced what they called the Arab problem: the country was already inhabited. This book examines one of the answers repeatedly proposed to that problem — the removal of the indigenous population to neighbouring Arab countries — and tracks it from the 1880s to the war of 1948.
Masalha’s method is what gives the book its weight. He does not argue from outcome backwards; he works through the Zionist movement’s own written record, from the late nineteenth century up to the 1948 war. The result was, and largely remains, the most comprehensive study of the transfer idea in Zionist thinking before 1948, and it changed what could be said about intent. What it illuminates above all, in the publisher’s own words, is the attitude of the Israeli political and military decision-makers towards the Palestinians on the eve of the exodus of some 750,000 people during the 1948 war.
It is a scholarly monograph rather than a narrative history, and it reads like one: dense, heavily cited, argued from the documents. That is also why it has held up. When a claim about 1948 needs to be traced to what was written down beforehand, this is the book that carries the citations.
About the author
Nur Masalha, born in the Galilee in 1957, is a Palestinian historian who studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and took his doctorate at SOAS, University of London. Expulsion of the Palestinians was his first book. He is also the author of The Politics of Denial, The Palestine Nakba and Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History, the last also in this library.
Details
- Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington, D.C., 1992 — 235 pages
- ISBN 9780887282423 (paperback); 0887282350 (hardcover)
Where to find it
- Published by the Institute for Palestine Studies, the Palestinian research institution founded in Beirut in 1963.
- Borrowable free through the Internet Archive’s lending library: Expulsion of the Palestinians.
- Stocked by Middle East Books and More.
Connected in the archive
22 connected records22 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
named in this record — 5 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Jerusalemالقدس
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Nur Masalha, born in the Galilee in 1957, is a Palestinian historian who studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and took his doctorate at SOAS, University of London.
- Nakba
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: He is also the author of The Politics of Denial, The Palestine Nakba and Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History, the last also in this library.
- Nur Masalhaنور مصالحة
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Nur Masalha, born in the Galilee in 1957, is a Palestinian historian who studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and took his doctorate at SOAS, University of London.
- Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: He is also the author of The Politics of Denial, The Palestine Nakba and Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History, the last also in this library.
- The Nakba
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: He is also the author of The Politics of Denial, The Palestine Nakba and Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History, the last also in this library.
names this record — 2 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- There is no real evidence for the Nakba — it is a Palestinian narrative, not documented history
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Alongside the state archives sit the private papers: Herzl's diaries, Ben-Gurion's diaries and letters, and Yosef Weitz's unedited diaries in the Central Zionist Archives, the source base Nur Masalha used for Expulsion of the Palestinians.
- Transfer was never the plan — expulsion was an accident of war, not a Zionist idea
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: …1937 and proposed a population transfer to go with it, Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary on 12 July 1937 — quoted from the Ben-Gurion Archives by Nur Masalha in Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948 (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992) — that "the compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state…
on a related subject — 15 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- Abd al-Qadir al-Husayniعبد القادر الحسيني
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "1948".
- Abd al-Rahim Mahmoudعبد الرحيم محمود
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "1948".
- Avi Shlaimأفي شلايم
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "1948".
- Balata Campمخيّم بلاطة
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "1948".
- Dheisheh Campمخيّم الدهيشة
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "1948".
- Dimitri Baramkiديمتري برامكي
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "1948".
- and 9 more
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948.” Library, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/library/expulsion-of-the-palestinians/.- MLA
“Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948.” Library, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/library/expulsion-of-the-palestinians/. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-expulsion-of-the-palestinians, title = {Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/library/expulsion-of-the-palestinians/}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }