Plan Dalet (, Tokhnit dalet "Plan D"; 1 April – 14 May, 1948) was a Zionist military plan executed during the 1948 Palestine war for the conquest of territory in Mandatory Palestine in preparation for the establishment of a Jewish state. The plan was the blueprint for Israel's military operations, starting in March 1948 until the end of the war in early 1949, and so played a central role in the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight known as the Nakba.
The plan was requested by the Jewish Agency leader and later first prime minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion, and developed by the Haganah and finalized on March 10, 1948. Historians describe Plan Dalet as the beginning of a new phase in the 1948 Palestine war in which Zionist forces shifted to an offensive strategy.
The plan was a set of guidelines to take control of Mandatory Palestine, declare a Jewish state, and defend its borders and people, including the Jewish population outside of the borders, "before, and in anticipation of" the invasion by regular Arab armies.MidEast Web, Plan Daleth (Plan D)Ten years of research into the 1947-49 war - The expulsion of the Palestinians re-examined. By Dominique Vidal. Le Monde diplomatique. December 1997. Plan Dalet specifically included gaining control of areas wherever Yishuv populations existed, including those outside the borders of the proposed Jewish state.Robbie Sabel, [’https://www.google.com/books/edition/International_Law_and_the_Arab_Israeli_C/f_xpEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbp International Law and the Arab-Israeli Conflict,] Cambridge University Press 2022 p.131:'The objective of this plan is to gain control of the areas of the Hebrew state and defend its borders. It also aims at gaining control of the areas of Jewish settlement and concentration which are located outside the borders (of the Jewish state in the Partition Plan) against regular, semi-regular, and small forces operating from bases outside or inside the state.’ .'
The plan's tactics involved laying siege to Palestinian Arab villages, bombing neighbourhoods of cities, forced expulsion of their inhabitants, and setting fields and houses on fire and detonating TNT in the rubble to prevent any return. Zionist military units possessed detailed lists of neighborhoods and villages to be destroyed and their Arab inhabitants expelled. One of the first and most well known operations of Plan Dalet was the Deir Yassin massacre.
This strategy is subject to controversy, with some historians characterizing it as defensive, while others assert that it was an integral part of a planned strategy for the expulsion, sometimes called an ethnic cleansing, of the area's native inhabitants. "The essence of the plan was the clearing of hostile and potentially hostile forces out of the interior of the territory of the prospective Jewish State, establishing territorial continuity between the major concentrations of Jewish population and securing the future State's borders before, and in anticipation of, the invasion [by Arab states]."
Etymology Its name comes from the letter Dalet (ד), the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, after plans named Aleph (א), Bet (ב), and Gimel (ג) were revised.
Background Avnir plan In the summer of 1937, the commander of their forces in the Tel Aviv area, Elimelech Slikowitz (nicknamed Avnir) received an order from Ben-Gurion, according to the official history of the Haganah. Ben-Gurion, anticipating an eventual British withdrawal from the country after the Peel Report, asked Avnir to prepare a plan for the military conquest of the whole of Palestine. This Avnir Plan provided a blueprint for future plans. The blueprint was refined in subsequent adjustments (A, B, C) before emerging in its final form over a decade later as Plan Dalet.Walid Khalidi, Revisiting the UNGA Partition Resolution, in Journal of Palestine Studies, Autumn, 1997, vol. 27, No. 1 (Autumn, 1997), pp.5-21, p.7Ahmad H. Sa'di, 'Reflections on Representations, History and Moral Accountability,' in Ahmad H. Sa'di, Lila Abu-Lughod (eds.),Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory,Columbia University Press, 2007 pp285-314. p.295
Four adjustments From 1945 onward, the Haganah designed four general military plans, the implementation of the final version of which eventually led to the creation of Israel and the dispossession of the Palestinians:Ruling Palestine: A History of the Legally Sanctioned Jewish-Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine. The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions - COHRE / Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights, 2005. , p. 27. Plan Aleph (Plan A), drawn up in February 1945 to complement the political aim of a unilateral declaration of independence. It was designed to suppress Palestinian Arab resistance to the Zionist takeover of parts of Palestine.Safty, Adel. Might Over Right: How The Zionists Took Over Palestine. Garnet Publishing, 2012. Plan Bet (Plan B), produced in September 1945, emerged in May 1947 and was designed to replace Plan Aleph in the context of new developments such as Britain's submission of the problem of Palestine to the United Nations and growing opposition from surrounding Arab states to the Zionist partition plan. Plan Gimel (Plan C), also known as "May Plan", produced in May 1946, emerged in November/December 1947, in the wake of the UN Partition Plan. It was designed to enhance Zionist military and police mobilisation and enable action as needed.The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappé. Oneworld Publications, 2006.Davidson, Lawrence Cultural Genocide. "Israel's 'War of Independence' - Ethnic Cleansing in Practice", p.74-75. Rutgers University Press, 2012.Khalidi, W. "Plan Dalet: master plan for the conquest of Palestine", J. Palestine Studies 18 (1), 1988, p. 4-33 (published earlier in Middle East Forum, November 1961) Plan Dalet (Plan D), of March 1948, is the most noteworthy. Guided by a series of specific operational plans, the broad outlines of which were considered as early as 1944, Plan Dalet was drawn up to expand Jewish-held areas beyond those allocated to the proposed Jewish State in the UN Partition Plan. Its overall objective was to seize as much territory as possible in advance of the termination of the British Mandate—when the Zionist leaders planned to declare their state.
UN Partition plan On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to approve the Partition Plan for Palestine for ending the British Mandate and recommending the establishment of an Arab state and a Jewish state. In the immediate aftermath of the UN's approval of the Partition plan, the Jewish community expressed joy, while the Arab community expressed discontent. On the day after the vote, a spate of Arab attacks left at least eight Jews dead, one in Tel Aviv by sniper fire, and seven in ambushes on civilian buses that were claimed to be retaliations for a Lehi raid ten days earlier.
From January onward, operations became increasingly militarized, with the intervention of a number of regiments of the Arab Liberation Army (consisting of volunteers from Arab countries) inside Palestine, each active in a variety of distinct sectors around the different coastal towns. They consolidated their presence in Galilee and Samaria.Yoav Gelber (2006), pp. 51–56 Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni came from Egypt with several hundred men of the Army of the Holy War. Having recruited a few thousand volunteers, al-Husayni organised the blockade of the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem.Dominique Lapierre et Larry Collins (1971), chap. 7, pp. 131–153 To counter this, the Yishuv authorities tried to supply the Jews of the city with food by using convoys of up to 100 armoured vehicles, but the operation became more and more impractical as the number of casualties in the relief convoys surged. By March, Al-Hussayni's tactic, sometimes called "The War of the Roads", had paid off. Almost all of Haganah's armoured vehicles had been destroyed, the blockade was in full operation, and the Haganah had lost more than 100 troops.Benny Morris (2003), p. 163 According to Benny Morris, the situation for those who dwelt in the Jewish settlements in the highly isolated Negev and North of Galilee was equally critical. According to Ilan Pappé, in early March, the Yishuv's security leadership did not seem to regard the overall situation as particularly troubling, but instead was busy finalising a master plan.
This situation caused the United States to withdraw their support for the Partition plan, thus encouraging the Arab League to believe that the Palestinians, reinforced by the Arab Liberation Army, could put an end to partition. The British, meanwhile, decided on 7 February 1948, to support the annexation of the Arab part of Palestine by Transjordan.Henry Laurens (2005), p. 83
Plan Dalet In 1947, David Ben-Gurion reorganised Haganah and made conscription obligatory. Every Jewish man and woman in the country had to receive military training. Military equipment was procured from stockpiles from the Second World War and from Czechoslovakia and was brought in Operation Balak. There is some disagreement among historians about the precise authors of Plan Dalet. According to some, it was the result of the analysis of Yigael Yadin, at that time the temporary head of the Haganah, after Ben-Gurion invested him with the responsibility to come up with a plan in preparation for the announced intervention of the Arab states. According to Ilan Pappé the plan was conceived by the "consultancy", a group of about a dozen military and security figures and specialists on Arab affairs, under the guidance of Ben-Gurion. It was finalised and sent to Haganah units in early March 1948. The plan consisted of a general part and operational orders for the brigades, which specified which villages should be targeted and other specific missions.Khalidi, 1988 The general section of the plan was also sent to the Yishuv's political leaders.
Text The Hebrew text of Plan Dalet was published in 1972 in volume 3, part 3 of Sefer Toldot Hahaganah ( History of the Haganah), Appendix 48, pp. 1955-60. An English translation of the text of Plan Dalet was published for the first time as an appendix to Khalidi's 1988 reprint of "Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine" in the Journal of Palestine Studies.
Purpose In this plan, the Haganah also started the transformation from an underground organization into a regular army. The reorganization included the formation of brigades and front commands. The stated goals included in addition to the reorganization, gaining control of the areas of the planned Jewish state as well as areas of Jewish settlements outside its borders. The control would be attained by fortifying strongholds in the surrounding areas and roads, conquering Arab villages close to Jewish settlements and occupying British bases and police stations (from which the British were withdrawing).
The introduction of the plan states: (a) The objective of this plan is to gain control of the areas of the Hebrew state and defend its borders. It also aims at gaining control of the areas of Jewish settlements and concentrations which are located outside the borders (of the Hebrew state) against regular, semi-regular, and small forces operating from bases outside or inside the state. (b) This plan is based on three previous plans: Plan B, September 1945. The May 1946 Plan [this is Plan Gimel] Yehoshua Plan, 1948 [an earlier version of Plan Dalet named after , a Haganah commander killed December 1947]