Plan Dalet (, Tokhnit dalet 'Plan D') was a Zionist military plan executed in the civil war phase of the 1948 Palestine war for the conquest of territory in Mandatory Palestine in preparation for the establishment of a Jewish state. The plan was requested by the Jewish Agency leader David Ben-Gurion and developed by the Haganah and finalized March 10, 1948.
The plan, requested by David Ben-Gurion who became Israel's first prime minister, 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. According to the Israeli Yehoshafat Harkabi, Plan Dalet called for the conquest of Arab towns and villages inside and along the borders of the area allocated to the proposed Jewish State in the UN Partition Plan. In case of resistance, the population of conquered villages was to be expelled outside the borders of the Jewish state. If no resistance was met, the residents could stay put, under military rule.
Plan Dalet specifically spoke of gaining control of areas outside the borders of the Jewish state wherever Yishuv populations existed. The issue is subject to much controversy, with some historians asserting that it was defensive, while other historians assert that the plan aimed at the expulsion, sometimes called an ethnic cleansing, on the grounds that this was an integral part of a planned strategy.
Etymology
Its name was 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
In the summer of 1937, according to the official history of the Haganah, the commander of their forces in the Tel Aviv area, Elimelech Slikowitz ("Avnir") received an order from Ben-Gurion who, anticipating an eventual British withdrawal from the country after the Peel Report, asking Slikowitz to prepare a plan for the military conquest of the whole of Palestine. According to the historians Walid Khalidi and Ahmad H. Sa'di, it was this Avnir Plan which provided a blueprint, refined in subsequent adjustments (A,B,C) before it emerged in its final form as Plan Dalet over a decade later.
From 1945 onwards, 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: 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 take-over of parts of Palestine. Plan Bet (Plan B), produced in September 1945, emerged in May 1947 and 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. 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.