Flight and expulsion of Palestinians, 1948

In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves.

From April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy, but there is an atmosphere of [population] transfer.

on October 31, 1948, the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population.

the expulsion order for the city of Lod, which was signed by Yitzhak Rabin

how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948? Twenty-four.

if we take all the massacres and all the executions of 1948, we come to about 800 who were killed.

There is no explicit order of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy

it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages.

Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here.

Without the uprooting of the Palestinians

As a result of the conflict in Palestine there are approximately 360,000 Arab refugees and 7,000 Jewish refugees requiring aid

The right of the Arab refugees to return to their homes in Jewish controlled territory at the earliest possible date should be affirmed by the United Nations

approximately 360,000 Arab refugees and 7,000 Jewish refugees requiring aid

Over this turbulent period, more than half of the nearly 1.4 million Palestinian Arabs were driven from or fled their homes.

Most conventional accounts of the 1948 War tend to focus on events after 15 May 1948, the date when the state of Israel was founded, and the Arab armies intervened unsuccessfully in Palestine in the wake of the stunning collapse of the Palestinians.

The official Israeli version maintains that the Palestinians left the country on orders from their leaders and in the expectation of a triumphal return

He found no evidence of Arab calls on the Palestinians to leave their homes

there were many different reasons for the Palestinian exodus but the single most important reason was Israeli political, military, and psychological pressure.

Between 700,000 and 750,000 people, almost half the Arab population of Palestine, became refugees in 1948.

Zionism's responsibility for the Palestinian exodus and diaspora is an integral part of the genesis of the State of Israel.

the persistent official Israeli version of the events of 1948

the collapse and dispersion of Palestinian society was largely the responsibility of Palestinian and other Arab leaders, not of the Zionists.

We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their place. All our aspiration is built on the assumption - proven throughout all our activity - that there is enough room for ourselves and the Arabs in Palestine.

The Israeli narrative views the Palestinian tragedy as primarily self-inflicted, resulting from their vehement rejection of the 1947 United Nations resolution calling for two states in Palestine, and the violent attempt by regional Arab states to abort the Jewish state at birth.

The expulsion of more than half of the Palestinian population in 1948 and the capture of 78 percent of Mandatory Palestine by and large ensured

the Palestinian Nakba, or “catastrophe,” of 1948

a large Palestinian minority survived within the Green Line, equivalent to 13 percent of the population in 1949

Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date

to ascribe agency to the Palestinians, to avoid seeing them either as no more than helpless victims of forces greater then themselves