Social Cohesion and Community Displacement in Armed Conflict: Evidence from Palestinian Villages in the 1948 War

Abstract

Why do some communities flee their homes during armed conflict, while others remain and risk exposure to further violence? This article investigates whether and how whole communities flee home territory, which we refer to as evacuation, in the context of strategic displacement campaigns. We explain variation in the process of forced displacement, focusing on civilian agency in shaping conflict processes. Specifically, we differentiate between preemptive (prior to displacement violence) and violent (in response to displacement violence) evacuation. We theorize that, in the context of strategic displacement campaigns, social cohesion enhances communities' ability to preemptively evacuate by facilitating collective action to evade imminent violence exposure. We test the theory in the context of Arab Palestinian communities' displacement during the 1948 war in Mandate Palestine. We measure village evacuation drawing upon historical accounts of forced displacement during the war and social cohesion using an original dataset based on new archival material from a survey of Arab Palestinian villages conducted during the early 1940s.

Legacies of Survival: Historical Violence and Ethnic Minority Behavior

“…The narrative promoted by Palestinians, together with some Israeli historians, emphasizes the use of violence in the displacement and its importance to the overall intentional strategy of ensuring favorable demography to the new state of Israel. They argue that part of the military strategy of the Jewish forces was to methodically cleanse Palestinian villages after their capture by forcing their inhabitants to leave and in many times blowing up their houses, or by scaring Palestinian to flee by carrying out massacres (Arnon, Mcalexander, and Rubin 2021;Morris 2004;Pappe 2006;Raz 2021) The Palestinians who managed to avoid displacement to external territories became members of a new minority in the newly created state of Israel. They experienced different relationships with the government and the majority group over time.…”

“…We will explain the divergent effect of violence in settings where the targeted group is a minority and look at how the changing political and social circumstances alter the effects of violence over time. The case of the PCI is an understudied one that encompasses unique empirical opportunities that caused the recent resurgent interest in it (see Arnon, Mcalexander, and Rubin 2021; McAlexander 2021). We also contribute to the civil war literature by showing that the economic cleavages can actually restrain the mobilization of ethnic minorities when they are extreme and are accompanied with severe violence and repression.…”