What caused the Palestinian refugee problem?
Estimates of the numbers of Palestinian Arab refugees created as a result of the conflict range from 600,000 to 850,000. There was no deliberate, coordinated Jewish policy to expel them. With war raging, the factors that caused them to leave were complex. Whilst in some cases individual Jewish commanders told Arabs to leave in the belief that this was a military necessity, in the chaos of the moment, many left out of fear spread by rumour and exaggerated reports of Israeli atrocities, fuelled by the incident at Deir Yassin. The lack of a wholesale plan of expulsion is evidenced by examples whereby local Jews encouraged their Arab neighbours to stay, for example in Haifa. In the midst of the conflict, Israel’s Declaration of Independence offered full citizenship and equal rights to all Arabs living within Israel and indeed, after the war, the 150,000 Arabs that remained in Israel were awarded full citizenship. Arab members were elected to the first Israeli parliament in 1949. In the abs
Estimates of the numbers of Palestinian Arab refugees created as a result of the conflict range from 600,000 to 850,000. The refugee crisis came as a result of the war, and there was no deliberate, coordinated Jewish policy to expel the Arabs. With war raging, the factors that caused them to leave were complex. Whilst in some cases individual Jewish commanders told Arabs to leave in the belief that this was a military necessity, in the chaos of the moment, many left out of fear spread by rumour and exaggerated reports of Israeli atrocities, fuelled by the incident at Deir Yassin. The lack of a wholesale plan of expulsion is evidenced by examples whereby local Jews encouraged their Arab neighbours to stay, for example in Haifa. In the midst of the conflict, Israel’s Declaration of Independence offered full citizenship and equal rights to all Arabs living within Israel. After the war, the 150,000 Arabs that remained in Israel were awarded full citizenship. Arab members were elected to th
