In fact, we know what those "second thoughts" were. Stripped of a pretext to justify expulsions from Nazareth in the supposed "heat of battle," Ben Gurion came up with Plan B (or maybe it was Plan E, given that the ethnic cleansing was inspired by Plan Dalet, or D in Hebrew).
In the wake of the 1948 war, during a near two-decade period of military government imposed on Israel's new Palestinian minority, Ben Gurion decided to establish Nazareth Ilit (Upper Nazareth) almost on top of Nazareth. It was the flagship of his "Judaization of the Galilee" campaign. Ben Gurion was aghast not only that Nazareth had survived, but that it had doubled in size as thousands of refugees from surrounding villages fled to it seeking sanctuary.
According to Israeli state archives, Michael Michael, the military governor for Nazareth in this period, stated that the goal of Nazareth Ilit was to "swallow up" Nazareth. In short, Israel hoped retrospectively to destroy Nazareth as a Palestinian city, transforming it into another Lydd. The Jewish city of Nazareth Ilit would become the main city, with Nazareth its own shadow ghetto. Despite Israel's best efforts, it largely failed in this goal, not least because it struggled to attract Israeli Jews to live next to a large Palestinian population .
Why was it so important for the Israeli leadership to destroy Nazareth? Because they feared that a Palestinian city -- with its intellectuals, political activists, and advanced education system under the control of international Christian institutions -- might encourage the emergence of an effective resistance, one that would be able to mount opposition to a state privileging Jews. Such a political and cultural capital might articulate to the outside world exactly what Israel was up to in Judaising places with large Palestinian populations like the Galilee.
The Toronto Star's starry-eyed account of Dunkelman includes the following observation: "He won no medals for refusing to molest civilians [in Nazareth], nor any credit from his Israeli superiors." He is painted as a man who stuck close to the rules of war and avoided hurting civilians wherever possible in a series of "almost bloodless" attacks.
But in fact, as the Star notes in passing, Dunkelman's chief military talent was for making innovative use of "concentrated mortar barrages," a skill he learnt during the Second World War. In other words, he was an expert at firing large numbers of imprecise shells into populated areas, inevitably killing and wounding civilians.
Two Canadians have published posts making important criticisms of the Star's account.
Peter Larson, chair of Canada's National Education Committee on Israel-Palestine, points out that the operation in July 1948 led by Dunkelman was an attack on communities like Nazareth that were supposed to be firmly part of an Arab state under the terms of the United Nations Partition Plan, set out nine months earlier. As Larson writes, "Nazareth was forcibly incorporated into the new State of Israel contrary to the UN plan and despite the wishes of its residents."
Protection for ChristiansThere is archival evidence to suggest that Dunkelman believed Christian Palestinians needed protecting, a view he did not extend to Muslim Palestinians.
Israeli historian Benny Morris notes a cable from Dunkelman as his troops marched through the Galilee in November 1948: "I protest against the eviction of Christians from the village of Rama and its environs. We saw Christians at Rama in the fields thirsty for water and suffering from robbery. Other brigades expelled Christians from villages that did not resist and surrendered to our forces. I suggest that you issue an order to return the Christians to their villages."
Morris mentions that under the influence of Dunkelman, among others, the Israeli army's guidelines on the expulsion of Christian Palestinians changed over time.
In contrast to his decision to protect Nazareth and Christians, Dunkelman and his soldiers were ruthless in driving out Palestinians from many of the more than 500 Palestinian communities razed by Israel in 1948 and afterwards.
War crimesIn Saffuriya, a large Muslim village a few kilometres from Nazareth that was attacked by the Seventh Brigade a day earlier, barrel bombs were dropped on the village as the residents were at home breaking that day's Ramadan fast. All of Saffuriya's inhabitants were driven out, and their homes destroyed. Today it is an exclusively Jewish farming community called Tzipori.
Without a doubt, Dunkelman directly participated in the mass expulsion of many tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians from their homes -- a war crime by the laws of war that had recently emerged in the wake of the Second World War. He also admitted in his memoir that he allowed his troops to loot Palestinian property, another war crime.
But, while he does not refer to them in Dual Allegiance, Dunkelman is also implicated in some of the more notorious Israeli massacres of Palestinians in 1948.
In the worst case, in the village of Safsaf, north of Safad, notes Canadian journalist Dan Freeman-Moloy, Dunkelman had command responsibility as he led Operation Hiram in late October 1948. His troops' behavior in Safsaf and elsewhere is made clear in documents in Israel's military archives uncovered by Morris for his book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem.
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