What happened to the Arab population of the conquered lands?
Some 700,000 fled into neighbouring countries. Many ended up in squalid refugee camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, then under the control of Jordan and Egypt respectively. The refugees and their descendants now number around 4m. Were they expelled or did they go voluntarily? One of the most cherished myths perpetuated by Israeli hawks is that the Palestinians were ordered to leave by Arab governments, as part of a scorched earth policy. The Palestinians themselves say this is nonsense, and that they were driven from their ancestral lands by Israeli soldiers and paramilitary forces, in a ruthless campaign of terror. Was the ethnic cleansing successful? No. Many Arabs stayed within the new, expanded Israel. They and their progeny now number around 1m, nearly a fifth of Israel’s total population. They have full civil rights, though many argue that they are second-class citizens. In the Six Day War of 1967, Israel conquered and occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with a present
