Plan Dalet was a strategy paper of the Haganah, the largest Zionist paramilitary group, for assuming control of Palestine following the end of British control in 1948. Its implementation has become known among Palestinians as "Al-Nakba" the catastrophe.
Under the
United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine the territory of Palestine was to be divided into a Jewish state and an Arab state according to the majority population in each area.
According to part 4 of the plan, aims included:
So it appears that the intention of Plan Dalet was a deliberate grab of as much as possible of the territory and institutions alloted to the Arab state under the UN plan.
According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe's book
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Plan Dalet was "a blueprint for ethnic cleansing." Pappe states that the general section of the plan, which was distributed to politicians, was misguiding as to the real intentions of the Haganah. The real plan was handed down to the brigade commanders
Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian at Exeter University. He has written extensively on Zionism and Palestine. Here he lectures on Al-Nakba, the Catastrophe.
Ilan Pappe on "The Nakba of Palestine" - YouTubehttp://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUDh-jTa3Go