1948 Ostzonenmeisterschaft Final
The 1948 Ostzonenmeisterschaft Final decided the winner of the 1948 Ostzonenmeisterschaft, the 1st edition of the Ostzonenmeisterschaft, a knockout football cup competition to decide the champions of the Soviet occupation zone.


1948 Ostzonenmeisterschaft Final
The match was played on 4 July 1948 at the Probstheidaer Stadion in Leipzig. SG Planitz won the match 1–0 against Freiimfelde Halle for their 1st title.


1948 Ostzonenmeisterschaft Final, Route to the final
The Ostzonenmeisterschaft was a ten team single-elimination knockout cup competition. There were a total of three rounds leading up to the final. Four teams entered the qualifying round, with the two winners advancing to the quarter-finals, where they were joined by six additional clubs who were given a bye. For all matches, the winner after 90 minutes advances. If still tied, extra time was used to determine the winner.


1948 Ottawa Rough Riders season
The 1948 Ottawa Rough Riders finished in 1st place in the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union with a 10–2 record but lost the Grey Cup game to the Calgary Stampeders.


1948 Ottawa municipal election
The city of Ottawa, Canada held municipal elections on December 6, 1948.


1948 Oxford-Cambridge rugby union tour of Argentina
The 1948 Oxford-Cambridge rugby union tour of Argentina was a series of matches played in Argentina, in Buenos Aires and Rosario in 1948.


1948 Oxford-Cambridge rugby union tour of Argentina
A mixed selection of players from Oxford and Cambridge universities was arranged for an historical tour


1948 Oxford-Cambridge rugby union tour of Argentina
After some contacting the previous years, the River Plate Rugby Union hosted, with the help of clubs of Gymnasia y Esgrima e and Hindú Club, this selection, formed also of many international player of British national team.


1948 PGA Championship
The 1948 PGA Championship was the 30th PGA Championship, held May 19–25 at Norwood Hills Country Club in St. Louis, Missouri. Ben Hogan won the match play championship, 7 & 6 over Mike Turnesa in the Tuesday final; the winner's share was $3,500 and the runner-up's was $1,500.


1948 PGA Championship
It was Hogan's second and final PGA Championship victory and the second of his nine major titles; the first was a 6 & 4 win in 1946 at Portland, and the third came a few weeks later at the U.S. Open at Riviera. Following a near-fatal auto accident in early 1949, his debilitated condition did not agree with the grueling five-day schedule of 36 holes per day in summer heat. Hogan did not enter the PGA Championship again until 1960, its third year as a 72-hole stroke play event, at 18 holes per day.


1948 PGA Championship
Defending champion Jim Ferrier lost in the second round to semifinalist Claude Harmon, 1 up. Harmon defeated Sam Snead in 42 holes in the quarterfinals, but was stopped by Turnesa in 37 holes in the next round.


1948 PGA Championship
Hogan became only the second of four players in history to win the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship in the same calendar year. He was preceded by Gene Sarazen in 1922 and followed by Jack Nicklaus in 1980. Through 2016, Tiger Woods is the last to win both, in 2000, part of his Tiger Slam of four consecutive majors.


1948 PGA Championship, Format
The match play format at the PGA Championship in 1948 called for 12 rounds (216 holes) in seven days:


1948 Pacific Tigers football team
The 1948 Pacific Tigers football team was an American football team that represented the College of the Pacific (COP) during the 1948 college football season.


1948 Pacific Tigers football team
Pacific competed in the California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA). In their second season under head coach Larry Siemering, the Tigers had seven wins, one loss, and two ties (7–1–2, 4–1 CCAA) and outscored all opponents by a combined total of 356 to 147. At the end of the season, the Tigers were invited to the Grape Bowl in Lodi, California, where they tied Hardin–Simmons, 35–35.


1948 Pacific Tigers football team, Team players in the NFL
No College of the Pacific players were selected in the 1949 NFL Draft.


1948 Pacific typhoon season
The 1948 Pacific typhoon season is an average season. Ihas no official bounds; it ran year-round in 1948, but most tropical cyclones tend to form in the northwestern Pacific Ocean between June and December. These dates conventionally delimit the period of each year when most tropical cyclones form in the northwestern Pacific Ocean.


1948 Pacific typhoon season
The scope of this article is limited to the Pacific Ocean, north of the equator and west of the International Date Line. Storms that form east of the date line and north of the equator are called hurricanes; see 1948 Pacific hurricane season. At the time, tropical storms that formed within this region of the western Pacific were identified and named by the United States Armed Services, and these names are taken from the list that USAS publicly adopted before the 1945 season started.


1948 Pacific typhoon season, Storms, Typhoon Karen
Typhoon Karen, the strongest cyclone of the season and one of the earliest recorded super typhoons, developed on January 11, well west of the Philippines. It curved westward while slowly intensifying. After a prolonged period of slow intensification, the tropical cyclone began to rapidly strengthen. It became a super typhoon on January 16. Shortly after, it weakened and dissipated on January 19.


1948 Pacific typhoon season, Storms, Typhoon Karen
It struck Yap on January 14, damaging and destroying establishments and houses on the island. It also wrecked the roofs of some U.S. warehouses and buildings, and downed power lines. A food warehouse were washed out; however, some food supplies survived.


1948 Pacific typhoon season, Storms, Typhoon Karen
After the typhoon, the navy transported some relief supplies to the populated island. No deaths were reported.


1948 Pacific typhoon season, Storms, Typhoon Lana
Typhoon Lana, the second system of the season, formed on May 16, west of the Philippines. It moved to the north-northeast while intensifying, reaching its peak intensity somewhere on May 18 and 19. It then weakened, until it was last noted on May 20 as it merged with a cold front.


1948 Pacific typhoon season, Storms, Typhoon Lana
Warnings were issued for Yap, Palau, Guam and Ulithi in preparations for the storm. All ships in these islands were instructed to escape to Sangley Point due to the approaching typhoon.


1948 Pacific typhoon season, Storms, Typhoon Lana
A plane in Guam encountered the strength of the typhoon; however, it escaped its fury. Eighteen individuals were reported dead in Yap when their canoe sank during the storm. The damage, however, was minimal.


1948 Pacific typhoon season, Storms, Tropical Storm Ophelia
Ophelia formed on June 10 in the South China Sea. It moved west and struck southern China. It dissipated the next day, without attaining maximum sustained winds any higher than 45 mph.


1948 Pacific typhoon season, Storms, Typhoon Dolores–Eunice
Tropical Storm Dolores was tracked by the Air Weather Service located on Guam. At one point, a tropical storm was identified and assigned the name Eunice. Post analysis showed that Tropical Storm Dolores was north of the forecast location and actually the system assigned the name Eunice.


1948 Pacific typhoon season, Storms, Typhoon Ione
A Tropical Storm formed on September 11 and soon turned toward Japan as it gained strength. Ione soon reached category 4 intensity on September 14. Ione then began to lose strength and became a category 1 on September 16. Then, Ione struck Japan in that day killing 838 people. Ione further weakened and became a Tropical Storm on the 17th. Ione then dissipated.


1948 Pacific typhoon season, Storms, Other Systems
Between 23 July and 4 August, the name Annabell was assigned to a North West Pacific system. The Air Weather Service issued a bulletin issued and tropical cyclone named on what was later determined to be "trough activity"


1948 Pacific typhoon season, Storm names
Tropical storm names were assigned by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center since 1945.


1948 Paisley by-election
The Paisley by-election, 1948 was a parliamentary by-election held on 18 February 1948 for the British House of Commons constituency of Paisley in Scotland. it was indirectly caused by the death of former Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin which had the effect of elevating his son, the sitting Labour MP Oliver Baldwin, to become Earl Baldwin of Bewdley.


1948 Paisley by-election
The election was a straight fight between Douglas Johnston for Labour and John MacCormick, a Scottish nationalist candidate with the support of the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party, with Johnston emerging the winner by 6,545 votes: Johnston received 27,213 votes to  McCormick's 20,668.


1948 Palestinian exodus
The 1948 Palestinian exodus occurred when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of prewar Palestine's Arab population – fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Palestine war. The exodus was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession and displacement of Palestinian society, known as the Nakba, in which between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed and others subject to Hebraization of Palestinian place names, and also refers to the wider period of war itself and the subsequent oppression up to the present day.


1948 Palestinian exodus
The precise number of refugees, many of whom settled in refugee camps in neighboring states, is a matter of dispute but around 80 percent of the Arab inhabitants of what became Israel (half of the Arab total of Mandatory Palestine) left or were expelled from their homes. About 250,000–300,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled during the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, before the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948, a fact which was named as a casus belli for the entry of the Arab League into the country, sparking the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.


1948 Palestinian exodus
The causes are also a subject of fundamental disagreement among historians. Factors involved in the exodus include Jewish military advances, destruction of Arab villages, psychological warfare, fears of another massacre by Zionist militias after the Deir Yassin massacre, which caused many to leave out of panic, direct expulsion orders by Israeli authorities, the voluntary self-removal of the wealthier classes, collapse in Palestinian leadership and Arab evacuation orders, and an unwillingness to live under Jewish control.


1948 Palestinian exodus
Later, a series of laws passed by the first Israeli government prevented Arabs who had left from returning to their homes or claiming their property. They and many of their descendants remain refugees. The expulsion of the Palestinians has since been described by some historians as ethnic cleansing, while others dispute this charge.


1948 Palestinian exodus
The status of the refugees, and in particular whether Israel will allow them the right to return to their homes, or compensate them, are key issues in the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The events of 1948 are commemorated by Palestinians both in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere on 15 May, a date known as Nakba Day.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History
The history of the Palestinian exodus is closely tied to the events of the war in Palestine, which lasted from 1947 to 1949, and to the political events preceding it. In September 1949, the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine estimated 711,000 Palestinian refugees existed outside Israel, with about one-quarter of the estimated 160,000 Palestinian Arabs remaining in Israel as "internal refugees".


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, December 1947 – March 1948
In the first few months of the civil war, the climate in the Mandate of Palestine became volatile, although throughout this period both Arab and Jewish leaders tried to limit hostilities. According to historian Benny Morris, the period was marked by Palestinian Arab attacks and Jewish defensiveness, increasingly punctuated by Jewish reprisals. Simha Flapan wrote that attacks by the Irgun and Lehi resulted in Palestinian Arab retaliation and condemnation. Jewish reprisal operations were directed against villages and neighborhoods from which attacks against Jews were believed to have originated.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, December 1947 – March 1948
The retaliations were more damaging than the provoking attack and included killing of armed and unarmed men, destruction of houses and sometimes expulsion of inhabitants. The Zionist groups of Irgun and Lehi reverted to their 1937–1939 strategy of indiscriminate attacks by placing bombs and throwing grenades into crowded places such as bus stops, shopping centres and markets. Their attacks on British forces reduced British troops' ability and willingness to protect Jewish traffic. General conditions deteriorated: the economic situation became unstable, and unemployment grew. Rumours spread that the Husaynis were planning to bring in bands of "fellahin" (peasant farmers) to take over the towns. Some Palestinian Arab leaders sent their families abroad.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, December 1947 – March 1948
Yoav Gelber wrote that the Arab Liberation Army embarked on a systematic evacuation of non-combatants from several frontier villages in order to turn them into military strongholds. Arab depopulation occurred most in villages close to Jewish settlements and in vulnerable neighborhoods in Haifa, Jaffa and West Jerusalem. The more impoverished inhabitants of these neighborhoods generally fled to other parts of the city. Those who could afford to fled further away, expecting to return when the troubles were over. By the end of March 1948 thirty villages were depopulated of their Palestinian Arab population. Approximately 100,000 Palestinian Arabs had fled to Arab parts of Palestine, such as Gaza, Beersheba, Haifa, Nazareth, Nablus, Jaffa and Bethlehem.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, December 1947 – March 1948
Some had left the country altogether, to Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. Other sources speak of 30,000 Palestinian Arabs. Many of these were Palestinian Arab leaders, middle and upper-class Palestinian Arab families from urban areas. Around 22 March, the Arab governments agreed that their consulates in Palestine would issue entry visas only to old people, women, children and the sick. On 29–30 March the Haganah Intelligence Service (HIS) reported that "the AHC was no longer approving exit permits for fear of [causing] panic in the country."


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, December 1947 – March 1948
The Haganah was instructed to avoid spreading the conflagration by stopping indiscriminate attacks and provoking British intervention.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, December 1947 – March 1948
On 18 December 1947 the Haganah approved an aggressive defense strategy, which in practice meant a limited implementation of "Plan May" also known as "Plan Gimel" or "Plan C" ("Tochnit Mai" or "Tochnit Gimel"), which, produced in May 1946, was the Haganah master plan for the defence of the Yishuv in the event of the outbreak of new troubles the moment the British were gone. Plan Gimel included retaliation for assaults on Jewish houses and roads.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, December 1947 – March 1948
In early January the Haganah adopted Operation Zarzir, a scheme to assassinate leaders affiliated to Amin al-Husayni, placing the blame on other Arab leaders, but in practice few resources were devoted to the project and the only attempted killing was of Nimr al Khatib.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, December 1947 – March 1948
The only authorised expulsion at this time took place at Qisarya, south of Haifa, where Palestinian Arabs were evicted and their houses destroyed on 19–20 February 1948. In attacks that were not authorised in advance, several communities were expelled by the Haganah and several others were chased away by the Irgun.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, December 1947 – March 1948
According to Ilan Pappé, the Zionists organised a campaign of threats, consisting of the distribution of threatening leaflets, "violent reconnaissance" and, after the arrival of mortars, the shelling of Arab villages and neighborhoods. Pappé also wrote that the Haganah shifted its policy from retaliation to offensive initiatives.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, December 1947 – March 1948
During the "long seminar", a meeting of Ben-Gurion with his chief advisors in January 1948, the main point was that it was desirable to "transfer" as many Arabs as possible out of Jewish territory, and the discussion focussed mainly on the implementation. The experience gained in a number of attacks in February 1948, notably those on Qisarya and Sa'sa', was used in the development of a plan detailing how enemy population centers should be handled. According to Pappé, plan Dalet was the master plan for the expulsion of the Palestinians.. However, according to Gelber, Plan Dalet instructions were: 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.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, December 1947 – March 1948
Palestinian belligerency in these first few months was "disorganised, sporadic and localised and for months remained chaotic and uncoordinated, if not undirected". Husayni lacked the resources to mount a full-scale assault on the Yishuv, and restricted himself to sanctioning minor attacks and to tightening the economic boycott. The British claimed that Arab rioting might well have subsided had the Jews not retaliated with firearms.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, December 1947 – March 1948
Overall, Morris concludes that during this period the "Arab evacuees from the towns and villages left largely because of Jewish—Haganah, IZL or LHI—attacks or fear of impending attack" but that only "an extremely small, almost insignificant number of the refugees during this early period left because of Haganah or IZL or LHI expulsion orders or forceful 'advice' to that effect."


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, December 1947 – March 1948
In this sense, Glazer quotes the testimony of Count Bernadotte, the UN mediator in Palestine, who reported that "the exodus of the Palestinian Arabs resulted from panic created by fighting in their communities, by rumours concerning real or alleged acts of terrorism, or expulsion. Almost the whole of the Arab population fled or was expelled from the area under Jewish occupation."


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948
By 1 May 1948, two weeks before the Israeli Declaration of Independence, nearly 175,000 Palestinians (approximately 25%) had already fled.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948
The fighting in these months was concentrated in the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv area, On 9 April, the Deir Yassin massacre and the rumours that followed it spread fear among the Palestinians. Next, the Haganah defeated local militia in Tiberias. On 21–22 April in Haifa, after the Haganah waged a day-and-a-half battle including psychological warfare, the Jewish National Committee was unable to offer the Palestinian council assurance that an unconditional surrender would proceed without incident. Finally, Irgun under Menachim Begin fired mortars on the infrastructure in Jaffa. Combined with the fear inspired by Deir Yassin, each of these military actions resulted in panicked Palestinian evacuations.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948
The significance of the attacks by underground military groups Irgun and Lehi on Deir Yassin is underscored by accounts on all sides. Meron Benvenisti regards Deir Yassin as "a turning point in the annals of the destruction of the Arab landscape".


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Haifa
Palestinians fled the city of Haifa en masse, in one of the most notable flights of this stage. Historian Efraim Karsh writes that not only had half of the Arab community in Haifa community fled the city before the final battle was joined in late April 1948, but another 5,000–15,000 left apparently voluntarily during the fighting while the rest, some 15,000–25,000, were ordered to leave, as was initially claimed by an Israeli source, on the instructions of the Arab Higher Committee.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Haifa
Karsh concludes that there was no Jewish grand design to force this departure, and that in fact the Haifa Jewish leadership tried to convince some Arabs to stay, to no avail. Walid Khalidi disputes this account, saying that two independent studies, which analysed CIA and BBC intercepts of radio broadcasts from the region, concluded that no orders or instructions were given by the Arab Higher Committee.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Haifa
According to Morris, "The Haganah mortar attacks of 21–22 April [on Haifa] were primarily designed to break Arab morale in order to bring about a swift collapse of resistance and speedy surrender. [ ...] But clearly the offensive, and especially the mortaring, precipitated the exodus. The three-inch mortars "opened up on the market square [where there was] a great crowd [...] a great panic took hold. The multitude burst into the port, pushed aside the policemen, charged the boats and began to flee the town", as the official Haganah history later put it". According to Pappé, this mortar barrage was deliberately aimed at civilians to precipitate their flight from Haifa.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Haifa
The Haganah broadcast a warning to Arabs in Haifa on 21 April: "that unless they sent away 'infiltrated dissidents' they would be advised to evacuate all women and children, because they would be strongly attacked from now on".


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Haifa
Commenting on the use of "psychological warfare broadcasts" and military tactics in Haifa, Benny Morris writes:


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Haifa
Throughout the Haganah made effective use of Arabic language broadcasts and loudspeaker vans. Haganah Radio announced that "the day of judgement had arrived" and called on inhabitants to "kick out the foreign criminals" and to "move away from every house and street, from every neighbourhood occupied by foreign criminals". The Haganah broadcasts called on the populace to "evacuate the women, the children and the old immediately, and send them to a safe haven". Jewish tactics in the battle were designed to stun and quickly overpower opposition; demoralisation was a primary aim.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Haifa
It was deemed just as important to the outcome as the physical destruction of the Arab units. The mortar barrages and the psychological warfare broadcasts and announcements, and the tactics employed by the infantry companies, advancing from house to house, were all geared to this goal. The orders of Carmeli's 22nd Battalion were "to kill every [adult male] Arab encountered" and to set alight with fire-bombs "all objectives that can be set alight. I am sending you posters in Arabic; disperse on route."


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Haifa
By mid-May 4,000 Arabs remained in Haifa. These were concentrated in Wadi Nisnas in accordance with Plan D whilst the systematic destruction of Arab housing in certain areas, which had been planned before the War, was implemented by Haifa's Technical and Urban Development departments in cooperation with the IDF's city commander Ya'akov Lublini.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Further events
According to Glazer (1980, p. 111), from 15 May 1948 onwards, expulsion of Palestinians became a regular practice. Avnery (1971), explaining the Zionist rationale, says,


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Further events
I believe that during this phase, the eviction of Arab civilians had become an aim of David Ben-Gurion and his government... UN opinion could very well be disregarded. Peace with the Arabs seemed out of the question, considering the extreme nature of the Arab propaganda. In this situation, it was easy for people like Ben-Gurion to believe the capture of uninhabited territory was both necessary for security reasons and desirable for the homogeneity of the new Hebrew state.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Further events
Based on research of numerous archives, Morris provides an analysis of Haganah-induced flight:


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Further events
Undoubtedly, as was understood by IDF intelligence, the most important single factor in the exodus of April–June was Jewish attack. This is demonstrated clearly by the fact that each exodus occurred during or in the immediate wake of military assault. No town was abandoned by the bulk of its population before the Haganah/IZL assault... The closer drew the 15 May British withdrawal deadline and the prospect of invasion by Arab states, the readier became commanders to resort to "cleansing" operations and expulsions to rid their rear areas. [ R]elatively few commanders faced the moral dilemma of having to carry out the expulsion clauses. Townspeople and villagers usually fled their homes before or during battle... though (Haganah commanders) almost invariably prevented inhabitants, who had initially fled, from returning home...


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Further events
Israeli vans with loudspeakers drove through the streets ordering all the inhabitants to evacuate immediately, and such as were reluctant to leave were forcibly ejected from their homes by the triumphant Israelis whose policy was now openly one of clearing out all the Arab civil population before them... From the surrounding villages and hamlets, during the next two or three days, all the inhabitants were uprooted and set off on the road to Ramallah... No longer was there any "reasonable persuasion". Bluntly, the Arab inhabitants were ejected and forced to flee into Arab territory... Wherever the Israeli troops advanced into Arab country the Arab population was bulldozed out in front of them.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Further events
After the fall of Haifa the villages on the slopes of Mount Carmel had been harassing the Jewish traffic on the main road to Haifa. A decision was made on 9 May 1948 to expel or subdue the villages of Kafr Saba, al-Tira, Qaqun, Qalansuwa and Tantura. On 11 May 1948 Ben-Gurion convened the "Consultancy"; the outcome of the meeting is confirmed in a letter to commanders of the Haganah Brigades telling them that the Arab legion's offensive should not distract their troops from the principal tasks: "the cleansing of Palestine remained the prime objective of Plan Dalet."


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Further events
The attention of the commanders of the Alexandroni Brigade was turned to reducing the Mount Carmel pocket. Tantura, being on the coast, gave the Carmel villages access to the outside world and so was chosen as the point to surround the Carmel villages as a part of the Coastal Clearing offensive operation in the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Further events
On the night of 22–23 May 1948, one week and one day after the declaration of Independence of the State of Israel, the coastal village of Tantura was attacked and occupied by the 33rd Battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade of the Haganah. The village of Tantura was not given the option of surrender and the initial report spoke of dozens of villagers killed, with 300 adult male prisoners and 200 women and children. Many of the villagers fled to Fureidis (previously captured) and to Arab-held territory. The captured women of Tantura were moved to Fureidis, and on 31 May Brechor Shitrit, Minister of Minority Affairs of the provisional Government of Israel, sought permission to expel the refugee women of Tantura from Fureidis as the number of refugees in Fureidis was causing problems of overcrowding and sanitation.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Further events
A report from the military intelligence SHAI of the Haganah titled "The emigration of Palestinian Arabs in the period 1/12/1947-1/6/1948", dated 30 June 1948, affirms that:


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Further events
At least 55% of the total of the exodus was caused by our (Haganah/IDF) operations. To this figure, the report's compilers add the operations of the Irgun and Lehi, which "directly (caused) some 15%... of the emigration". A further 2% was attributed to explicit expulsion orders issued by Israeli troops, and 1% to their psychological warfare. This leads to a figure of 73% for departures caused directly by the Israelis. In addition, the report attributes 22% of the departures to "fears" and "a crisis of confidence" affecting the Palestinian population. As for Arab calls for flight, these were reckoned to be significant in only 5% of cases...


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Further events
According to Morris's estimates, 250,000 to 300,000 Palestinians left Israel during this stage. "Keesing's Contemporary Archives" in London place the total number of refugees before Israel's independence at 300,000.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, April–June 1948, Further events
In Clause 10. (b) of the cablegram from the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States to the UN Secretary-General of 15 May 1948 justifying the intervention by the Arab States, the Secretary-General of the League alleged that "approximately over a quarter of a million of the Arab population have been compelled to leave their homes and emigrate to neighbouring Arab countries."


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, July–October 1948
Israeli operations labeled Dani and Dekel that broke the truce were the start of the third phase of expulsions. The largest single expulsion of the war began in Lydda and Ramla 14 July when 60,000 inhabitants (nearly 10% of the whole exodus) of the two cities were forcibly expelled on the orders of Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin in events that came to be known as the "Lydda Death March".


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, July–October 1948
According to Flapan (1987, pp. 13–14) in Ben-Gurion's view Ramlah and Lydda constituted a special danger because their proximity might encourage co-operation between the Egyptian army, which had started its attack on Kibbutz Negbah, near Ramlah, and the Arab Legion, which had taken the Lydda police station. However, the author considers that Operation Dani, under which the two towns were seized, revealed that no such co-operation existed.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, July–October 1948
In Flapan's opinion, "in Lydda, the exodus took place on foot. In Ramlah, the IDF provided buses and trucks. Originally, all males had been rounded up and enclosed in a compound, but after some shooting was heard, and construed by Ben-Gurion to be the beginning of an Arab Legion counteroffensive, he stopped the arrests and ordered the speedy eviction of all the Arabs, including women, children, and the elderly." In explanation, Flapan cites that Ben-Gurion said that "those who made war on us bear responsibility after their defeat."


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, July–October 1948
Flapan maintains that events in Nazareth, although ending differently, point to the existence of a definite pattern of expulsion. On 16 July, three days after the Lydda and Ramlah evictions, the city of Nazareth surrendered to the IDF. The officer in command, a Canadian Jew named Ben Dunkelman, had signed the surrender agreement on behalf of the Israeli army along with Chaim Laskov (then a brigadier general, later IDF chief of staff). The agreement assured the civilians that they would not be harmed, but the next day, Laskov handed Dunkelman an order to evacuate the population, which Dunkelman refused.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, July–October 1948
Additionally, widespread looting and several cases of rape took place during the evacuation. In total, about 100,000 Palestinians became refugees in this stage according to Morris.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, October 1948 – March 1949
This period of the exodus was characterized by Israeli military accomplishments; Operation Yoav, in October, this cleared the road to the Negev, culminating in the capture of Beersheba; Operation Ha-Har that same month which cleared the Jerusalem Corridor from pockets of resistance; Operation Hiram, at the end of October, resulted in the capture of the Upper Galilee; Operation Horev in December 1948 and Operation Uvda in March 1949, completed the capture of the Negev (the Negev had been allotted to the Jewish State by the United Nations) these operations were met with resistance from the Palestinian Arabs who were to become refugees.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, October 1948 – March 1949
The Israeli military activities were confined to the Galilee and the sparsely populated Negev desert. It was clear to the villages in the Galilee, that if they left, return was far from imminent. Therefore, far fewer villages spontaneously depopulated than previously. Most of the Palestinian exodus was due to a clear, direct cause: expulsion and deliberate harassment, as Morris writes "commanders were clearly bent on driving out the population in the area they were conquering".


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, October 1948 – March 1949
During Operation Hiram in the upper Galilee, Israeli military commanders received the order: "Do all you can to immediately and quickly purge the conquered territories of all hostile elements in accordance with the orders issued. The residents should be helped to leave the areas that have been conquered." (31 October 1948, Moshe Carmel) The UN's acting Mediator, Ralph Bunche, reported that United Nations Observers had recorded extensive looting of villages in Galilee by Israeli forces, who carried away goats, sheep and mules. This looting, United Nations Observers reported, appeared to have been systematic as army trucks were used for transportation.


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, October 1948 – March 1949
The situation, states the report, created a new influx of refugees into Lebanon. Israeli forces, he stated, have occupied the area in Galilee formerly occupied by Kaukji's forces, and have crossed the Lebanese frontier. Bunche goes on to say "that Israeli forces now hold positions inside the south-east corner of Lebanon, involving some fifteen Lebanese villages which are occupied by small Israeli detachments."


1948 Palestinian exodus, History, October 1948 – March 1949
According to Morris altogether 200,000–230,000 Palestinians left in this stage. According to Ilan Pappé, "In a matter of seven months, five hundred and thirty one villages were destroyed and eleven urban neighborhoods emptied [...] The mass expulsion was accompanied by massacres, rape and [the] imprisonment of men [...] in labor camps for periods [of] over a year."


1948 Palestinian exodus, Contemporary mediation and the Lausanne Conference, UN mediation
The United Nations, using the offices of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation and the Mixed Armistice Commissions, was involved in the conflict from the very beginning. In the autumn of 1948 the refugee problem was a fact and possible solutions were discussed. Count Folke Bernadotte said on 16 September:


1948 Palestinian exodus, Contemporary mediation and the Lausanne Conference, UN mediation
UN General Assembly Resolution 194, passed on 11 December 1948 and reaffirmed every year since, was the first resolution that called for Israel to let the refugees return:


1948 Palestinian exodus, Contemporary mediation and the Lausanne Conference, Lausanne Conference of 1949
At the start of the Lausanne Conference of 1949, on 12 May 1949, Israel agreed in principle to allow the return of all Palestinian refugees. At the same time, Israel became a member of the U.N. upon the passage of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 273 on 11 May 1949, which read, in part,


1948 Palestinian exodus, Contemporary mediation and the Lausanne Conference, Lausanne Conference of 1949
Instead Israel made an offer of allowing 100,000 of the refugees to return to the area, though not necessarily to their homes, including 25,000 who had returned surreptitiously and 10,000 family-reunion cases. The proposal was conditional on a peace treaty that would allow Israel to retain the territory it had captured which had been allocated to the Arab state by the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, and, contrary to Israel's UN acceptance promise, on the Arab states absorbing the remaining 550,000–650,000 refugees. The Arab states rejected the proposal on both legal, moral and political grounds, and Israel quickly withdrew its limited offer.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Contemporary mediation and the Lausanne Conference, Lausanne Conference of 1949
Benny Morris, in his 2004 book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, summarizes it from his perspective:


1948 Palestinian exodus, Debate on the causes of the Palestinian exodus, Initial positions
In the first decades after the exodus, two diametrically opposed schools of analysis could be distinguished. "Israel claims that the Arabs left because they were ordered to, and deliberately incited into panic, by their own leaders who wanted the field cleared for the 1948 war," while "The Arabs charge that their people were evicted at bayonet-point and by panic deliberately incited by the Zionists." Alternative explanations had also been offered. For instance Peretz and Gabbay emphasize the psychological component: panic or hysteria swept the Palestinians and caused the exodus.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Debate on the causes of the Palestinian exodus, Initial positions
The dominant Israeli narrative was presented in the publications of various Israeli state institutions such as the national Information Center, the Ministry of Education (history and civic textbooks) and the army (IDF), as well as in Israeli-Jewish societal institutions: newspapers, memoirs of 1948 war veterans, and in the studies of the research community. However, a number of Jewish scholars living outside of Israel – including Gabbay and Peretz – since the late 1950s presented a different narrative. According to this narrative, some Palestinians left willingly while others were expelled by the Jewish and later Israeli fighting forces.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Debate on the causes of the Palestinian exodus, Changes in the Israeli Representation of the Causes for the Exodus – Late 1970s
The dominance in Israel of the willing-flight Zionist narrative of the exodus began to be challenged by Israeli-Jewish societal institutions beginning mainly in the late 1970s. Many scholarly studies and daily newspaper essays, as well as some 1948 Jewish war veterans' memoirs have begun presenting the more balanced narrative (at times called onwards a "post-Zionist"). According to this narrative, some Palestinians left willingly (due to calls of Arab or their leadership to partially leave, fear, and societal collapse), while others were expelled by the Jewish/Israeli fighting forces.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Debate on the causes of the Palestinian exodus, Changes after the advent of the "New Historians" – Late 1980s
The Israeli-Jewish societal change intensified in the late 1980s. The publication of balanced/critical newspaper essays increased, the vast majority, along with balanced 1948 war veterans' memoirs, about a third. At the same time, Israeli NGOs began more significantly to present the balanced and the Palestinian narratives more significantly in their publications. Moreover, Israel opened up part of its archives in the 1980s for investigation by historians. This coincided with the emergence of various Israeli historians, called New Historians, who favored a more critical analysis of Israel's history.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Debate on the causes of the Palestinian exodus, Changes after the advent of the "New Historians" – Late 1980s
The Arab/Palestinian official and historiographical versions hardly changed, and received support from some of the New Historians. Pappé calls the exodus an ethnic cleansing and points at Zionist preparations in the preceding years and provides more details on the planning process by a group he calls the "Consultancy." Morris also says that ethnic cleansing took place during the Palestinian exodus, and that "there are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing... when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide—the annihilation of your people—I prefer ethnic cleansing."


1948 Palestinian exodus, Debate on the causes of the Palestinian exodus, Changes after the advent of the "New Historians" – Late 1980s
According to Ian Black, Middle East editor for The Guardian newspaper, the Palestinian exodus is "widely described" as having involved ethnic cleansing. Not all historians accept the characterization of the exodus as ethnic cleansing. Israeli documents from 1948 use the term "to cleanse" when referring to uprooting Arabs. Efraim Karsh is among the few historians who still consider that most of the Arabs who fled left of their own accord or were pressured to leave by their fellow Arabs, despite Israeli attempts to convince them to stay.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Debate on the causes of the Palestinian exodus, Changes after the advent of the "New Historians" – Late 1980s
He says that the expulsions in Lod and Ramle were driven by military necessity. When an Israeli NGO Akevot managed to lift the censorship governing sections of Ben-Gurion's diary in 2021, it emerged that in 1949, responding to attempts by the Palestinians driven out of Lod and Ramle to return, Ben-Gurion advised that they be pushed towards Jordan: “We have to ‘pester’ them relentlessly… We need to pester and motivate the refugees in the south to move eastward as well, since they won’t go towards the sea and Egypt won’t let them in.'


1948 Palestinian exodus, Debate on the causes of the Palestinian exodus, Changes after the advent of the "New Historians" – Late 1980s
Pappé's scholarship on the issue has been subject to severe criticism. Benny Morris says that Pappé's research is flecked with inaccuracies and characterized by distortions. Ephraim Karsh refers to Pappé's assertion of a master plan by Jews to expel Arabs, as contrived.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Economic damage
As towns and villages were either conquered or abandoned in the conflict, looting by Jewish forces and residents was so widespread that, in the aftermath, David Ben-Gurion remarked on 24 July 1948: 'It turns out that most of the Jews are thieves.' Netiva Ben-Yehuda, a Palmach commander likened the pillaging she observed in Tiberias to the classic behavior seen by their oppressors during anti-Jewish pogroms in Europe:


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Economic damage
“Such pictures were known to us. It was the way things had always been done to us, in the Holocaust, throughout the world war, and all the pogroms. Oy, how well we knew those pictures. And here – here, we were doing these awful things to others. We loaded everything onto the van – with a terrible trembling of the hands. And that wasn’t because of the weight. Even now my hands are shaking, just from writing about it.'


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Abandoned, evacuated and destroyed Palestinian localities
Several authors have conducted studies on the number of Palestinian localities that were abandoned, evacuated or destroyed during the 1947–1949 period. Based on their respective calculations, the table below summarises their information.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Abandoned, evacuated and destroyed Palestinian localities
Source: The table data was taken from Ruling Palestine, A History of the Legally Sanctioned Jewish-Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine. COHRE & BADIL, May 2005, p. 34. Note: For information on methodologies; see: Morris, Benny (1987): 'The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987; Khalidi, Walid (ed. ): All that Remains. The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington, D.C: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992, App. IV, pp. xix, 585–586; and Sitta, Salman Abu: The Palestinian Nakba 1948. London: The Palestinian Return Centre, 2000.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Abandoned, evacuated and destroyed Palestinian localities
According to the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) and BADIL, Morris's list of affected localities, the shortest of the three, includes towns but excludes other localities cited by Khalidi or Abu Sitta. The six sources compared in Khalidi's study have in common 296 of the villages listed as destroyed or depopulated. Sixty other villages are cited in all but one source. Of the total of 418 localities cited in Khalidi, 292 (70 percent) were completely destroyed and 90 (22 percent) "largely destroyed".


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Abandoned, evacuated and destroyed Palestinian localities
COHRE and BADIL also note that other sources refer to an additional 151 localities that are omitted from Khalidi's study for various reasons (for example, major cities and towns that were depopulated, as well as some Bedouin encampments and villages "vacated" before the start of hostilities). Abu Sitta's list includes tribes in Beersheba that lost lands; most of these were omitted from Khalidi's work.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Abandoned, evacuated and destroyed Palestinian localities
Another study, involving field research and comparisons with British and other documents, concludes that 472 Palestinian habitations (including towns and villages) were destroyed in 1948. It notes that the devastation was virtually complete in some sub-districts. For example, it points out that 96.0% of the villages in the Jaffa area were totally destroyed, as were 90.0% of those in Tiberias, 90.3% of those in Safad, and 95.9% of those in Beisan. It also extrapolates from 1931 British census data to estimate that over 70,280 Palestinian houses were destroyed in this period.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Abandoned, evacuated and destroyed Palestinian localities
In another study, Abu Sitta shows the following findings in eight distinct phases of the depopulation of Palestine between 1947–1949. His findings are summarized in the table below:


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Abandoned, evacuated and destroyed Palestinian localities
* Other sources put this figure at over 70 000. Source: The table data was taken from Ruling Palestine, A History of the Legally Sanctioned Jewish-Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine. COHRE & BADIL, May 2005, p. 34. The source being: Abu Sitta, Salman (2001): "From Refugees to Citizens at Home". London: Palestine Land Society and Palestinian Return Centre, 2001.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Palestinian refugees
On 11 December 1948, 12 months prior to UNRWA's establishment, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 was adopted.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Palestinian refugees
The resolution accepted the definition of Palestinian refugees as "persons of Arab origin who, after 29 November 1947, left territory at present under the control of the Israel authorities and who were Palestinian citizens at that date" and; "Persons of Arab origin who left the said territory after 6 August 1924 and before 29 November 1947 and who at that latter date were Palestinian citizens; 2. Persons of Arab origin who left the territory in question before 6 August 1924 and who, having opted for Palestinian citizenship, retained that citizenship up to 29 November 1947"


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Palestinian refugees
UNRWA was established under UNGA resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December 1949. It defines refugees qualifying for UNRWA's services as "persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab–Israeli conflict" and also covers the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948. The UNRWA mandate does not extend to final status.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Palestinian refugees
The final 1949 UNRWA estimate of the refugee count was 726,000, but the number of registered refugees was 914,000. The U.N. Conciliation Commission explained that the number was inflated by "duplication of ration cards, addition of persons who have been displaced from area other than Israel-held areas and of persons who, although not displaced, are destitute," and the UNWRA additionally noted that "all births are eagerly announced, the deaths wherever possible are passed over in silence," as well as the fact that "the birthrate is high in any case, a net addition of 30,000 names a year." By June 1951, UNWRA had reduced the number of registered refugees to 876,000 after many false and duplicate registrations had been weeded out.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Palestinian refugees
Today the number who qualify for UNRWA's services has grown to over 4 million, one third of whom live in the West Bank and Gaza; slightly less than one third in Jordan; 17% in Syria and Lebanon (Bowker, 2003, p. 72) and around 15% in other Arab and Western countries. Approximately 1 million refugees have no form of identification other than an UNRWA identification card.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Prevention of Infiltration Law
Following the emergence of the Palestinian refugee problem after the 1948 Arab–Israeli war, many Palestinians tried, in one way or another, to return to their homes. For some time these practices continued to embarrass the Israeli authorities until they passed the Prevention of Infiltration Law, which defines offenses of armed and non-armed infiltration to Israel and from Israel to hostile neighboring countries. According to Arab Israeli writer Sabri Jiryis, the purpose of the law was to prevent Palestinians from returning to Israel, those who did so being regarded as infiltrators.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Prevention of Infiltration Law
According to Kirshbaum, over the years the Israeli Government has continued to cancel and modify some of the Defence (Emergency) Regulations of 1945, but mostly it has added more as it has continued to extend its declared state of emergency.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Prevention of Infiltration Law
For example, even though the Prevention of Infiltration Law of 1954 is not labelled as an official "Emergency Regulation", it extends the applicability of the "Defence (Emergency) Regulation 112" of 1945 giving the Minister of Defence extraordinary powers of deportation for accused infiltrators even before they are convicted (Articles 30 & 32), and makes itself subject to cancellation when the Knesset ends the State of Emergency upon which all of the Emergency Regulations are dependent.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Land and property laws
Following its establishment, Israel designed a system of law that legitimised both a continuation and a consolidation of the nationalisation of land and property, a process that it had begun decades earlier. For the first few years of Israel's existence, many of the new laws continued to be rooted in earlier Ottoman and British law. These laws were later amended or replaced altogether.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Land and property laws
The first challenge facing Israel was to transform its control over land into legal ownership. This was the motivation underlying the passing of several of the first group of land laws.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Land and property laws, Initial "Emergency Laws" and "Regulations"
Among the more important initial laws was article 125 of the "Defence (Emergency) Regulations"


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Land and property laws, Initial "Emergency Laws" and "Regulations"
According to Kirshbaum, the Law has as effect that "no one is allowed in or out without permission from the Israeli Military." "This regulation has been used to exclude a land owner from his own land so that it could be judged as unoccupied, and then expropriated under the 'Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law (1953)'. Closures need not be published in the Official Gazette."


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Land and property laws, Absentees' Property Laws
The Absentees' Property Laws were several laws, first introduced as emergency ordinances issued by the Jewish leadership but which after the war were incorporated into the laws of Israel. As examples of the first type of laws are the "Emergency Regulations (Absentees' Property) Law, 5709-1948 (December)", which according to article 37 of the "Absentees Property Law, 5710-1950" was replaced by the latter; the "Emergency Regulations (Requisition of Property) Law, 5709-1949", and other related laws.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Land and property laws, Absentees' Property Laws
According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 41), unlike other laws that were designed to establish Israel's "legal" control over lands, this body of law focused on formulating a "legal" definition for the people (mostly Arabs) who had left or been forced to flee from these lands.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Land and property laws, Absentees' Property Laws
The absentee property played an enormous role in making Israel a viable state. In 1954, more than one third of Israel's Jewish population lived on absentee property and nearly a third of the new immigrants (250,000 people) settled in urban areas abandoned by Arabs. Of 370 new Jewish settlements established between 1948 and 1953, 350 were on absentee property.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Land and property laws, Absentees' Property Laws
The absentee property law is directly linked to the controversy of parallelism between the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries and the Palestinian exodus, as advocacy groups have suggested that there are strong ties between the two processes and some of them even claim that decoupling the two issues is unjust.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Land and property laws, Absentees' Property Laws
However, al-Husseini, Palestinian governor of East Jerusalem in the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), has said that the Israeli law "is racist and imperialistic, which aims at seizing thousands of acres and properties of lands".


1948 Palestinian exodus, Results of the Palestinian exodus, Land and property laws, Laws enacted
A number of Israeli laws were enacted that enabled the further acquisition of depopulated lands. Among these laws were:


1948 Palestinian exodus, Israeli purge of documents
The Israeli government has systematically scoured Israeli archives to remove documents evidencing Israeli massacres of Palestinian villagers in 1947 and 1948 that led to the Palestinian exodus.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Israeli resettlement program
Following the Six-Day War, Israel gained control over a substantial number of refugee camps in the territories it captured from Egypt and Jordan. The Israeli government attempted to resettle them permanently by initiating a subsidized "build-your-own home" program. Israel provided land for refugees who chose to participate; the Palestinians bought building materials on credit and built their own houses, usually with friends. Israel provided the new neighborhoods with necessary services, such as schools and sewers.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Israeli resettlement program
The United Nations General Assembly passed Resolutions 31/15 and 34/52, which condemned the program as a violation of the refugees' "inalienable right of return", and called upon Israel to stop the program. Thousands of refugees were resettled into various neighborhoods, but the program was suspended due to pressure from the PLO.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Palestinian narrative
The term "Nakba" was first applied to the events of 1948 by Constantin Zureiq, a professor of history at the American University of Beirut, in his 1948 book "Ma'na al-Nakba" (The Meaning of the Disaster) he wrote "the tragic aspect of the Nakba is related to the fact that it is not a regular misfortune or a temporal evil, but a Disaster in the very essence of the word, one of the most difficult that Arabs have ever known over their long history." The word was used again one year later by the Palestinian poet Burhan al-Deen al-Abushi.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Palestinian narrative
In his encyclopedia published in the late 1950s, Aref al-Aref wrote: "How Can I call it but Nakba? When we the Arab people generally and the Palestinians particularly, faced such a disaster (Nakba) that we never faced like it along the centuries, our homeland was sealed, we [were] expelled from our country, and we lost many of our beloved sons." Muhammad Nimr al-Hawari also used the term Nakba in the title of his book "Sir al Nakba" (The Secret behind the Disaster) written in 1955. After the Six-Day War in 1967, Zureiq wrote another book, The New Meaning of the Disaster, but the term Nakba is reserved for the 1948 war.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Palestinian narrative
Together with Naji al-Ali's "Handala" (the barefoot child always drawn from behind), and the symbolic key for the house in Palestine carried by so many Palestinian refugees, the "collective memory of that experience [the Nakba] has shaped the identity of the Palestinian refugees as a people".


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Palestinian narrative
The events of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War greatly influenced the Palestinian culture. Countless books, songs and poems have been written about the Nakba. The exodus is usually described in strongly emotional terms. For example, at the controversial 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, prominent Palestinian scholar and activist Hanan Ashrawi referred to the Palestinians as "a nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing Nakba, as the most intricate and pervasive expression of persistent colonialism, "apartheid, racism, and victimization" (original emphasis).


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Palestinian narrative
In the Palestinian calendar, the day after Israel declared independence (15 May) is observed as Nakba Day. It is traditionally observed as an important day of remembrance. In May 2009 the political party headed by Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman introduced a bill that would outlaw all Nakba commemorations, with a three-year prison sentence for such acts of remembrance. Following public criticism the bill draft was changed, the prison sentence dropped and instead the Minister of Finance would have the authority to reduce state funding for Israeli institutions that hold the commemorations. The new draft was approved by the Knesset in March 2011.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Palestinian narrative
Ghada Karmi writes that the Israeli version of history is that the "Palestinians left voluntarily or under orders from their leaders and that Israelis had no responsibility, material or moral, for their plight." She also finds a form of denial among Israelis that Palestinians bear the blame for the Nakba by not accepting the UN's proposed partition of Palestine into separate ethnic states.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Palestinian narrative
Perry Anderson writes that "the Nakba was so swift and catastrophic that no Palestinian political organization of any kind existed for over a decade after it."


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Israeli narratives
The approach of the State of Israel and of Israeli-Jews to the causes of the exodus are divided into two main periods: 1949-late 1970s, late 1970s-nowadays. In the first period, state institutions (the national Information Center, IDF and the Ministry of Education) and societal ones (the research community, newspapers, and 1948 war veterans' memoirs) presented for the most part only the Zionist narrative of willing flight. There were some exceptions: the independent weekly Haolam Hazeh, the Communist Party's daily/weekly Kol HaAm and the socialist organisation Matzpen presented the Palestinian and the balanced/critical narratives.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Israeli narratives
In the second period there was a split. Regarding Israeli state institutions, at least until 2004, the IDF and the Information Center continued to present the Zionist narrative. The situation in the Ministry of Education, though, was somewhat different. While until 1999 its approved history and civics textbooks presented, by and large, the Zionist narrative, since 2000, however, they have presented the Critical one (at least until 2004). Similarly, in 2005, the Israeli National Archive published a book describing the expulsion of Palestinians from the cities of Lydda and Ramla in 1948. In other words, in the second period, the state institutions continued to present the Zionist narrative: some until the early 2000s, and some even onwards.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Israeli narratives
From the late 1970s onward, many newspaper articles and scholarly studies, as well as some 1948 war veterans' memoirs, began to present the balanced/critical narrative. This has become more common since the late 1980s, to the fact that since then the vast majority of newspaper articles and studies, and a third of the veterans' memoirs, have presented a more balanced narrative. Since the 1990s, also textbooks used in the educational system, some without approval of the Ministry of Education, began to present the balanced narrative.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Israeli narratives
In March 2015, Shai Piron, Yesh Atid party MK, and former education minister of Israel, called for Israel to have all schools include the Nakba in their curriculum. "I'm for teaching the Nakba to all students in Israel. I do not think that a student can go through the Israeli educational system, while 20% of students have an ethos, a story, and he does not know that story." He added that covering the topic in schools could address some of the racial tensions that exist in Israeli society. His comments broke a taboo in the traditional Israeli narrative, and conflicts with efforts on the part of some Israeli lawmakers to defund schools that mark Nakba.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Comparisons with Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries
The Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries was the departure, flight, migration, and expulsion of 800,000–1,000,000 Jews, primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background, from Arab and Muslim countries, mainly from 1948 onwards. The reasons for the exodus included push factors, such as state and non-state sanctioned persecution, antisemitism, political instability, poverty, disenfranchisement and expulsion; together with pull factors, such as the desire to fulfill Zionist yearnings or find a secure home in Europe or the Americas.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Comparisons with Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries
Professor Ada Aharoni, chairman of The World Congress of the Jews from Egypt, argues in an article entitled "What about the Jewish Nakba?" that exposing the truth about the expulsion of the Jews from Arab states could facilitate a genuine peace process, since it would enable Palestinians to realize they were not the only ones who suffered, and thus their sense of "victimization and rejectionism" will decline.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Comparisons with Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries
The US Congress supported this narrative with 2007-12 resolutions (, , ) which recommend that any "comprehensive Middle East peace agreement to be credible and enduring, the agreement must address and resolve all outstanding issues relating to the legitimate rights of all refugees, including Jews, Christians and other populations displaced from countries in the Middle East", and encouraged the Barack Obama administration to mention Jewish and other refugees as well, when mentioning Arab refugees from Palestine at international forum.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Comparisons with Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries
Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath has rejected the comparison, arguing that the ideological and historical significance of the two population movements are totally different and that any similarity is superficial. Porath says that the immigration of Jews from Arab countries to Israel, expelled or not, was from a Jewish-Zionist perspective the fulfilment of "a national dream" and of Israeli national policy in the form of the One Million Plan.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Comparisons with Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries
He notes the courageous efforts of Israeli agents working in Arab countries as Iraq, Yemen, and Morocco to assist a Jewish "aliyah", and that the Jewish Agency had agents, teachers, and instructors working in various Arab countries since the 1930s. Porath contrasts this with what he calls the "national calamity" and "unending personal tragedies" suffered by the Palestinians that resulted in "the collapse of the Palestinian community, the fragmentation of a people, and the loss of a country that had in the past been mostly Arabic-speaking and Islamic".


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Comparisons with Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries
Israeli academic Yehouda Shenhav has written in an article entitled "Hitching A Ride on the Magic Carpet" published in the Israeli daily Haaretz regarding this issue. "Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist in Iraq, adamantly opposed the analogy: "I don't regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists." Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri stated that the Jewish refugees from Arab countries were in fact responsible for the Palestinian displacement and that "those Jews are criminals rather than refugees".


1948 Palestinian exodus, Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, Comparisons with Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries
This came after Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, stated that Jewish refugees fleeing Arab lands because of persecution was a fabrication and that they "voluntarily and collectively left". In a Knesset hearing, Ran Cohen stated emphatically: "I have this to say: I am not a refugee." He added: "I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee."


1948 Palestinian exodus, Gallery
A Palestinian watches over a school in a refugee camp, 1948.


1948 Palestinian exodus, Gallery
Old and young in the entrance of a tent, 1948.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle
The 1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, also known as the Lydda Death March, was the expulsion of 50,000 to 70,000 Palestinian Arabs when Israeli troops captured the towns in July that year. The military action occurred within the context of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The two Arab towns, lying outside the area designated for a Jewish state in the UN Partition Plan of 1947, and inside the area set aside for an Arab state in Palestine, subsequently were transformed into predominantly Jewish areas in the new State of Israel, known as Lod and Ramla.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle
The exodus, constituting "the biggest expulsion of the war", took place at the end of a truce period, when fighting resumed, prompting Israel to try to improve its control over the Jerusalem road and its coastal route which were under pressure from the Jordanian Arab Legion, Egyptian and Palestinian forces.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle
From the Israeli perspective, the conquest of the towns, designed, according to Benny Morris, "to induce civilian panic and flight", averted an Arab threat to Tel Aviv, thwarted an Arab Legion advance by clogging the roads with refugees – the Yiftah Brigade was ordered to strip them  of "every watch, piece of jewelry, or money, or valuables" – to force the Arab Legion to assume an additional logistical burden with the arrival of masses of indigent refugees that would undermine its military capacities, and helped demoralise nearby Arab cities.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle
On 10 July, Glubb Pasha ordered the defending Arab Legion troops to "make arrangements ... for a phony war". The next day, Ramle surrendered immediately, but the conquest of Lydda took longer and led to an unknown number of deaths; the Palestinian historian Aref al-Aref, the only scholar who tried to draw up a balance sheet for the Palestinian losses, estimated 426 Palestinians died in Lydda on 12 July, of which 176 in the mosque and 800 overall in the fighting. Israeli historian Benny Morris suggests up to 450 Palestinians and 9–10 Israeli soldiers died.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle
Once the Israelis were in control of the towns, an expulsion order signed by Yitzhak Rabin was issued to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stating, "1. The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age....". Ramle's residents were bussed out, while the people of Lydda were forced to walk miles during a summer heat wave to the Arab front lines, where the Arab Legion, Transjordan's British-led army, tried to provide shelter and supplies. A number of the refugees died during the exodus from exhaustion and dehydration, with estimates ranging from a handful to a figure of 500.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle
The events in Lydda and Ramle accounted for one-tenth of the overall Arab exodus from Palestine, known in the Arab world as al-Nakba ('the catastrophe'). Some scholars, including Ilan Pappé, have characterised what occurred at Lydda and Ramle as ethnic cleansing. Many Jews who came to Israel between 1948 and 1951 settled in the refugees' empty homes, both because of a housing shortage and as a matter of policy to prevent former residents from reclaiming them. Ari Shavit noted that the "events were crucial phase of the Zionist revolution, and they laid the foundation for the Jewish state."


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Background, 1948 Palestine War
Palestine was under the rule of the British Mandate from 1917 to 1948. After 30 years of intercommunal conflict between Jewish and Arab Palestinians, on 29 November 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the territory into a Jewish and an Arab state, with Lydda and Ramle to form part of the latter.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Background, 1948 Palestine War
The proposal was welcomed by Palestine's Jewish community but rejected by the Arab leaders and civil war broke out between the communities. British authority broke down as the civil war spread, taking care only of little more than the evacuation of their own forces, although they maintained an air and sea blockade. After the first 4.5 months of fights, the Jewish militias had defeated the Arab ones and conquered the main mixed cities of the country, triggering the 1948 exodus of Palestinian Arabs. During that period between 300,000 and 350,000 Arab Palestinians fled or were expelled from their lands.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Background, 1948 Palestine War
The British Mandate expired on 14 May 1948, and the State of Israel declared its independence. Transjordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq intervened by sending expeditionary forces that entered former Mandatory Palestine and engaged Israeli forces. Six weeks of fighting followed, after which none of the belligerents had won the upper hand.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Background, 1948 Palestine War
After four weeks of truce, during which Israeli forces reinforced whereas Arab ones suffered under the embargo, the fighting resumed. The Lydda and Ramle events took place during that period.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Background, Strategic importance of Lydda and Ramle
Lydda  (Arabic: Al-Ludd اَلْلُدّْ) dates back to at least 5600–5250 BCE. Ramle (ar-Ramlah الرملة), three kilometers away, was founded in the 8th century CE. Both towns were strategically important because they sat at the intersection of Palestine's main north–south and east–west roads. Palestine's main railway junction and its airport (now Ben Gurion International Airport) were in Lydda, and the main source of Jerusalem's water supply was 15 kilometers away. Jewish and Arab fighters had been attacking each other on roads near the towns since hostilities broke out in December 1947.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Background, Strategic importance of Lydda and Ramle
Israeli geographer Arnon Golan writes that Palestinian Arabs had blocked Jewish transport to Jerusalem at Ramle, causing Jewish transportation to shift to a southern route. Israel had launched several ground or air attacks on Ramle and Latrun in May 1948, and Israel's prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, developed what Benny Morris calls an obsession with the towns; he wrote in his diary that they had to be destroyed, and on 16 June referred to them during an Israeli cabinet meeting as the "two thorns". Lydda's local Arab authority, officially subordinated to the Arab Higher Committee, assumed local civic and military powers. The records of Lydda's military command discuss military training, constructing obstacles and trenches, requisitioning vehicles and assembling armoured cars armed with machine-guns, and attempts at arms procurement. In April 1948, Lydda had become an arms supply center, and provided military training and security coordination for the neighboring villagers.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Background, Operation Dani
Israel subsequently launched Operation Danny to secure the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road and neutralise any threat to Tel Aviv from the Arab Legion, which was stationed in Ramallah and Latrun, with a number of men in Lydda. On 7 July the IDF appointed Yigal Allon to head the operation, and Yitzhak Rabin, who became Israel's prime minister in 1974, as his operations officer; both had served in the Palmach, an elite fighting force of the pre-Israel Jewish community in Palestine.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Background, Operation Dani
The operation was carried out between 9 July 1948, the end of the first truce in the Arab-Israeli war, and 18 July, the start of the second truce, a period known in Israeli historiography as the Ten Days. Morris writes that the IDF assembled its largest force ever: the Yiftach brigade; the Eighth Armoured Brigade's 82nd and 89th Battalions; three battalions of Kiryati and Alexandroni infantry men; an estimated 6,000 men with around 30 artillery pieces.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Background, Lydda's defenses
In July 1948 Lydda and Ramle had a joint population of 50,000–70,000 Palestinian Arabs, 20,000 of them refugees from Jaffa and elsewhere. Several Palestinian Arab towns had already fallen to Jewish or Israeli advances since April, but Lydda and Ramle had held out. There are differing views as to how well-defended the towns were. In January 1948, John Bagot Glubb, the British commander of Transjordan's Arab Legion, had toured Palestinian Arab towns, including Lydda and Ramle, urging them to prepare to defend themselves. The Legion had distributed barbed wire and as many weapons as could be spared. Lydda had an outer line of defense and prepared positions, an antitank ditch and field artillery as well as a heavily fortified and armed line northeast of central Lydda.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Background, Lydda's defenses
Israeli historians Alon Kadish and Avraham Sela write that the Arab National Committee—a local emergency Arab authority that answered to the Arab Higher Committee run by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem—had assumed civic and military control of Lydda, and had acquired arms, conducted training, constructed trenches, requisitioned vehicles, and organised medical services. By the time of the Israeli attack, they say the militia in Lydda numbered 1,000 men equipped with rifles, submachine guns, 15 machine guns, five heavy machine guns, 25 anti-tank launchers, six or seven light field-guns, two or three heavy ones, and armoured cars with machine guns. The IDF estimated that there was an Arab Legion force of around 200-300 men. Lydda contained several hundred Bedouin volunteers and a large-sized force of the Arab Legion. They argue that the deaths in Lydda occurred during a military battle for the town, not because of a massacre.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Background, Lydda's defenses
Against this view, Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi writes that just 125 Legionnaires from the Fifth Infantry Company were in Lydda—the Arab Legion numbered 6,000 in all—and that the rest of the town's defense consisted of civilian residents acting under the command of a retired Arab Legion sergeant. According to Morris, a number of Arab Legion soldiers, including 200–300 Bedouin volunteers, had arrived in Lydda and Ramle in April, and a company-sized force had set itself up in the old British police stations in Lydda and on the Lydda-Ramle road, with armoured cars and other weapons.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Background, Lydda's defenses
He writes that there were 150 Legionnaires in the town in June, though the Israelis believed there were up to 1,500. An Arab Legion officer was appointed military governor of both towns, signaling the desire of Abdullah I of Jordan to stake a claim in the parts of Palestine allotted by the UN to a Palestinian Arab state, but Glubb advised him that the Legion was overstretched and could not hold the towns. As a result, Abdullah ordered the Legion to assume a defensive position only, and most of the Legionnaires in Lydda withdrew during the night of 11–12 July.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Background, Lydda's defenses
Kadish and Sela write that the National Committee stopped women and children from leaving, because their departure had acted elsewhere as a catalyst for the men to leave too. They say it was common for Palestinian Arabs to leave their homes under threat of Israeli invasion, in part because they feared atrocities, particularly rape, and in part because of a reluctance to live under Jewish rule. In Lydda's case, they argue, the fears were more particular: a few days before the city fell, a Jew found in Lydda's train station had been publicly executed and his body mutilated by residents, who, according to Kadish and Sela, now feared Jewish reprisals.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Air attacks and surrender of Ramle
The Israeli air force began bombing the towns on the night of 9–10 July, intending to induce civilian flight, and it seemed to work in Ramle: at 11:30 hours on 10 July, Operation Dani headquarters (Dani HQ) told the IDF that there was a "general and serious flight from Ramla." That afternoon, Dani HQ told one of its brigades to facilitate the flight from Ramle of women, children, and the elderly, but to detain men of military age. On the same day, the IDF took control of Lydda airport.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Air attacks and surrender of Ramle
The Israeli air force dropped leaflets over both towns on 11 July telling residents to surrender. Ramle's community leaders, along with three prominent Arab family representatives, agreed to surrender, after which the Israelis mortared the city and imposed a curfew. The New York Times reported at the time that the capture of the city was seen as the high point of Israel's brief existence.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Air attacks and surrender of Ramle
Two different images emerged of Ramle under occupation. Khalil Wazir, who later joined the PLO and became known as Abu Jihad, was evicted from the town with his family, who owned a grocer's store there, when he was 12 years old. He said there was fear of a massacre, as there had been at Deir Yassin, and that there were bodies scattered in the streets and between the houses, including the bodies of women and children.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Air attacks and surrender of Ramle
Against this, the writer Arthur Koestler (1905–1983), working for The Times, visited Ramle a few hours after the invasion, and said people were hanging around in the streets as usual. A few hundred young men had been placed in a barbed wire cage, and were being taken in lorries to an internment camp. Women were bringing them food and water, he wrote, arguing with the Jewish guards and seemingly unafraid. He said the prevailing feeling seemed to be relief that the war was over.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Moshe Dayan raid on Lydda
During the afternoon of 11 July, Israel's 89th (armoured) Battalion, led by Lt. Col. Moshe Dayan, moved into Lydda. Israeli historian Anita Shapira writes that the raid was carried out on Dayan's initiative without coordinating it with his commander. Using a column of jeeps led by a Marmon-Herrington Armoured Car with a cannon—taken from the Arab Legion the day before—he launched the attack in daylight, driving through the town from east to west machine-gunning anything that moved, according to Morris, then along the Lydda-Ramle road firing at militia posts until they reached the train station in Ramle.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Moshe Dayan raid on Lydda
Kadish and Sela write that the troops faced heavy fire from the Arab Legion in the police stations in Lydda and on the Lydda-Ramle road and Dayan described "The town's [southern] entrance was awash with Arab combatants ... Hand grenades were thrown from all directions. There was a tremendous confusion." A contemporaneous account from Gene Currivan for The New York Times also said the firing met with heavy resistance. Dayan's men advanced until the train station where the wounded were treated, and returned to Bet Shemen under continued enemy fire from the police stations. Six of his men were killed and 21 were wounded.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Moshe Dayan raid on Lydda
Kenneth Bilby, a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, was in the city at the time. He wrote: "[The Israeli jeep column] raced into Lydda with rifles, Stens, and sub-machine guns blazing. It coursed through the main streets, blasting at everything that moved ... the corpses of Arab men, women, and even children were strewn about the streets in the wake of this ruthlessly brilliant charge." The raid lasted 47 minutes, leaving 100–150 Palestinian Arabs dead, according to Dayan's 89th Battalion. The Israeli side lost 6 dead and 21 wounded.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Moshe Dayan raid on Lydda
Kadish and Sela write that the high casualty rate was caused by confusion over who Dayan's troops were. The IDF were wearing keffiyehs and were led by an armoured car seized from the Arab Legion. Residents may have believed the Arab Legion had arrived, only to encounter Dayan's forces shooting at everything as they ran from their homes.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Surrender and unexpected shooting in Lydda by Arab Legionnaires
Although no formal surrender was announced in Lydda, people gathered in the streets waving white flags. On the evening of 11 July, 300–400 Israeli soldiers entered the town. Not long afterwards, the Arab Legion forces on the Lydda–Ramle road withdrew, though a small number of Legionnaires remained in the Lydda police station. More Israeli troops arrived at dawn on 12 July.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Surrender and unexpected shooting in Lydda by Arab Legionnaires
According to a contemporaneous IDF account: "Groups of old and young, women and children streamed down the streets in a great display of submissiveness, bearing white flags, and entered of their own free will the detention compounds we arranged in the mosque and church—Muslims and Christians separately." The buildings soon filled up, and women and children were released, leaving several thousand men inside, including 4,000 in one of the mosque compounds.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Surrender and unexpected shooting in Lydda by Arab Legionnaires
The Israeli government set up a committee to handle the Palestinian Arab refugees and their abandoned property. The committee issued an explicit order that forbade "to destroy, burn or demolish Arab towns and villages, to expel the inhabitants of Arab villages, neighbourhoods and towns, or to uproot the Arab population from their place of residence"  without having previously received,  a specific and direct order from the Minister of Defense. Regulations ordered the sealing off of Arab areas to prevent looting and acts of revenge and stated that captured men were to be treated as POWs with the Red Cross notified. Palestinian Arabs who wished to remain were allowed to do so and the confiscation of their property was prohibited.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Surrender and unexpected shooting in Lydda by Arab Legionnaires
The town dignitaries were assembled and after discussion, decided to surrender. Lydda's inhabitants were instructed to leave their weapons on the doorsteps to be collected by soldiers but did not do so. A curfew for that evening was announced over loudspeakers. A delegation of town dignitaries, including Lydda's mayor, left for the police station to prevail upon the Legionnaires there to also surrender. They refused and fired upon the party, killing the mayor and wounding several others. Despite this, the Israeli 3rd Battalion decided to accept the town's surrender.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Surrender and unexpected shooting in Lydda by Arab Legionnaires
Israeli historian Yoav Gelber writes that the Legionnaires still in the police station were panicking, and had been sending frantic messages to their HQ in Ramallah: "Have you no God in your hearts? Don't you feel any compassion? Hasten aid!" They were about to surrender, but were told by their HQ to wait to be rescued.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Surrender and unexpected shooting in Lydda by Arab Legionnaires
On 12 July, at 11:30 hours, two or three Arab Legion armoured cars entered the city, led by Lt. Hamadallah al-Abdullah from the Jordanian 1st Brigade. The Arab Legion armoured cars opened fire on the Israeli soldiers combing the Old City, which created the impression that the Jordanians had staged a counterattack. The exchange of gunfire led residents and Arab fighters to believe the Legion had arrived in force, and those still armed started firing at the Israelis too. Local militia renewed hostilities and an Israeli patrol were set upon by a rioting mob in the market place.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Surrender and unexpected shooting in Lydda by Arab Legionnaires
The Israeli military sustained many casualties, and viewing the renewed resistance as a surrender agreement violation, quickly quelled it, and many civilians died. Kadish and Sela write that, according to the 3rd Battalion's commander, Moshe Kelman, the Israelis came under heavy fire from "thousands of weapons from every house, roof and window". Morris calls this "nonsense" and argues that only a few dozen townspeople took part in what turned out to be a brief firefight.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Massacre in Lydda
Gelber describes what followed as probably the bloodiest massacre of the Arab–Israeli war. Shapira writes that the Israelis had no experience of governing civilians and panicked. Kelman ordered troops to shoot at any clear target, including at anyone seen on the streets. He said he had no choice; there was no chance of immediate reinforcements, and no way to determine the enemy's main thrust. Israeli soldiers threw grenades into houses they suspected snipers were hiding in. Residents ran out of their homes in panic and were shot. Yeruham Cohen, an IDF intelligence officer, said around 250 died between 11:30 and 14:00 hours.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Massacre in Lydda
However, Kadish and Sela state that there is no direct first-hand evidence that a massacre took place, other than a few dubious Arab sources. They say that a reconstruction of the battle suggests a "better, albeit more complex, explanation of the Arab losses" which also "casts severe doubt on, if it does not completely refute, the argument for the massacre in the al-'Umari Mosque." This view has been criticised.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Massacre in Lydda
Quoting from Kadish and Sela's paper, John W. Pool concluded: "«... on the morning of 12 July 1948, 'The Palmach forces in (Lydda) came under heavy fire from 'thousands of weapons from every house, roof and window' sustaining heavy casualties.» These assertions seem to be the foundation for much of the argument advanced in the article. I think that the authors should have furnished much more information about their precise meaning, factual validity, and sources."


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Massacre in Lydda
He continues: "he (Benny Morris) does not say how many townspeople were involved in the fighting but his account certainly suggests a number of Arab gunmen very much smaller than several thousand" (noted by Kadish and Sela). James Bowen is also critical. He places a cautionary note on the UCC web site: "...  it is based on a book written by the same authors which was published in 2000 by the Israeli Ministry of Defence."


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Massacre in Lydda
Palestinian historian Aref al-Aref placed the death toll at 426, including 179 he said were later killed in one of the mosques, during a confusing incident that sources variously refer to as a massacre or a battle. Thousands of male Muslim detainees had been taken to two of the mosques the day before. Christian detainees had been taken to the church or a nearby Greek Orthodox monastery, leaving the Muslims in fear of a massacre.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Massacre in Lydda
Morris writes that some of them tried to break out, thinking they were about to be killed, and in response the IDF threw grenades and fired anti-tank rockets into one of the mosque compounds. Kadish and Sela say it was a firefight that broke out between armed militiamen inside the mosque and Israeli soldiers outside and responding to attacks originating from the mosque, the Israelis fired an anti-tank shell into it, then stormed it, killing 30 militiamen inside.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Massacre in Lydda
In 2013, in testimony provided to Zochrot, Yerachmiel Kahanovich, a Palmach fighter present on the scene, stated he himself, amid the shelling of a mosque, had fired a PIAT anti-tank missile with enormous shock wave impact inside the mosque, and on examining it afterwards found the walls scattered with the remains of people. He also stated that anyone straying from the flight trail was shot dead. According to Morris, dozens died, including unarmed men, women and children; an eyewitness published a memoir in 1998 saying he had removed 95 bodies from one of the mosques.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Fall of the cities, Massacre in Lydda
When the shooting was over, bodies lay in the streets and houses in Lydda, and on the Lydda–Ramle road; Morris writes that there were hundreds. The Red Cross was due to visit the area, but the new Israeli military governor of Ramle issued an order to have the visit delayed. The visit was rescheduled for 14 July; Dani HQ ordered Israeli troops to remove the bodies by then, but the order seems not to have been carried out. Dr. Klaus Dreyer of the IDF Medical Corps complained on 15 July that there were still corpses lying in and around Lydda, which constituted a health hazard and a "moral and aesthetic issue." He asked that trucks and Arab residents be organized to deal with them.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Exodus, Expulsion orders
Benny Morris writes that David Ben-Gurion and the IDF were largely left to their own devices to decide how Palestinian Arab residents were to be treated, without the involvement of the Cabinet and other ministers. As a result, their policy was haphazard and circumstantial, depending in part on the location, but also on the religion and ethnicity of the town. The Palestinian Arabs of Western and Lower Galilee, mainly Christian and Druze, were allowed to stay in place, but Lydda and Ramle, mainly Muslim, were almost completely emptied. There was no official policy to expel the Palestinian population, he writes, but the idea of transfer was "in the air", and the leadership understood this.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Exodus, Expulsion orders
As the shooting in Lydda continued, a meeting was held on 12 July at Operation Dani headquarters between Ben-Gurion, Yigael Yadin and Zvi Ayalon, generals in the IDF, and Yisrael Galili, formerly of the Haganah, the pre-IDF army. Also present were Yigal Allon, commanding officer of Operation Dani, and Yitzhak Rabin. At one point Ben-Gurion, Allon, and Rabin left the room. Rabin has offered two accounts of what happened next.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Exodus, Expulsion orders
In a 1977 interview with Michael Bar-Zohar, Rabin said Allon asked what was to be done with the residents; in response, Ben-Gurion had waved his hand and said, "garesh otam"—"expel them." In the manuscript of his memoirs in 1979, Rabin wrote that Ben-Gurion had not spoken, but had only waved his hand, and that Rabin had understood this to mean "drive them out." The expulsion order for Lydda was issued at 13:30 hours on 12 July, signed by Rabin.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Exodus, Expulsion orders
In his memoirs Rabin wrote: "'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring. Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook. The population of Lod did not leave willingly. There was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march the 10 to 15 miles to the point where they met up with the legion." An Israeli censorship board removed this section from his manuscript, but Peretz Kidron, the Israeli journalist who translated the memoirs into English, passed the censored text to David Shipler of The New York Times, who published it on 23 October 1979.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Exodus, Expulsion orders
In an interview with The New York Times two days later, Yigal Allon took issue with Rabin's version of events. "With all my high esteem for Rabin during the war of independence, I was his commander and my knowledge of the facts is therefore more accurate," he told Shipler. "I did not ask the late Ben-Gurion for permission to expel the population of Lydda. I did not receive such permission and did not give such orders."


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Exodus, Expulsion orders
He said the residents left in part because they were told to by the Arab Legion, so the latter could recapture Lydda at a later date, and in part because they were panic-stricken. Yoav Gelber also takes issue with Rabin's account. He writes that Ben-Gurion was in the habit of expressing his orders clearly, whether verbally or in writing, and would not have issued an order by waving his hand; he adds that there is no record of any meetings before the invasion that indicate expulsion was discussed.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Exodus, Expulsion orders
He attributes the expulsions to Allon, who he says was known for his scorched earth policy. Wherever Allon was in charge of Israeli troops, Gelber writes, no Palestinians remained. Whereas traditional historiography in Israel has insisted that Palestinian refugees left their lands under the orders of Arab leaders, some Israeli scholars have challenged this view in recent years.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Exodus, Shitrit/Shertok intervention
The Israeli cabinet reportedly knew nothing about the expulsion plan until Bechor Shitrit, Minister for Minority Affairs, appeared unannounced in Ramle on 12 July. He was shocked when he realized troops were organizing expulsions. He returned to Tel Aviv for a meeting with Foreign Minister Moshe Shertok, who met with Ben Gurion to agree on guidelines for the treatment of the residents, though Morris writes that Ben Gurion apparently failed to tell Shitrit or Shertok that he himself was the source of the expulsion orders.


1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle, Exodus, Shitrit/Shertok intervention
Gelber disagrees with Morris's analysis, arguing that Ben-Gurion's agreement with Shitrit and Shertok is evidence that expulsion was not his intention, rather than evidence of his duplicity, as Morris implies. The men agreed the townspeople should be told that anyone who wanted to leave could do so, but that anyone who stayed was responsible for himself and would not be given food. Women, children, the old, and the sick were not to be forced to leave, and the monasteries and churches must not be damaged, though no mention was made of the mosques.