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The Palestinian Exodus is the name given to the
refugee flight of some 520,000 (Israeli estimate) to 1,000,000 (Arab estimate) Arabs during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, called the Nakba by Palestinians. They fled or were expelled from their homes in what was then known as Palestine and would become the State of Israel to other parts of Palestine or to neighbouring countries.The degree to which the flight of the refugees was voluntary or involuntary is hotly debated among Zionists and anti-Zionists, with the former citing attempts by the surrounding Arab governments to evacuate women and childern, and the attempt by some Jewish leaders, especially in Hafia, to stem flight, and the latter citing a score of well-documented mass killings by Israeli forces, and the direct expulsion of the residents of many towns and villages, including Lydda and Ramle.
In 1949, Israel offered to allow families that had been separated during the war to return, to release refugee accounts frozen in Israeli banks (eventually released in 1953), to pay compensation for abandoned lands and to repatriate 100,000 refugees. The Arabs rejected these offers, as they were unwilling to take any action that might be construed as recognition of Israel, and made repatriation a precondition for negotiations, something Israel rejected. The impasse was not resolved, and no refugees were permitted to return.
Today the original refugees and their descendants amount to some 5.5-6.5 million Palestinians.
The history of the Palestinian Exodus is closely tied to the events of the war in Palestine that lasted from 1947- 1949. But few other wars in history have produced such a massive refugee flight of one ethnic group as the Palestine war did. Therefore other factors must have played a role forming it. But what they are and how they affected it is still today a very debated issue.
From the start of the Zionist endeavour in Palestine, Zionist Jews wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine built on Jewish traditions and culture. The demographic reality of Palestine, which was populated mostly by Arabs, was the major obstacle to the establishment of a Jewish state.
The most important means to achieve that change was through aliya, Jewish immigration to the land of Israel. But the Palestinian Arab population had a much higher birth rate than the Jewish counterpart. Even with Jewish immigration, the Arab population growth firmly outpaced the Jewish one and no part of Palestine, with the exception the Tel Aviv area, Jerusalem, and some northern districts, would be able to produce a Jewish majority. To make matters worse, Jewish immigration was restricted by both the Ottoman Turks and the BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in Western Europe, usually known simply as the United Kingdom the UK Britain or less accurately as Great Britain . The UK was formed by a series of Acts of Union which united the formerly and relatively few diasporaThe term diaspora ( Greek διασπορα, a scattering or sowing of seeds) is used (without capitalization) to refer to any people or ethnic population forced or induced to leave their traditional ethnic homelands, be Jews actually wished to immigrate to Palestine, most preferring to move to North AmericaNorth America is the third largest continent in area and the fourth ranked in population. It is bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific Ocea.
An apartheid state, akin to the one in South AfricaSouth Africa is a republic at the southern tip of Africa. It is bordered to the north by Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, to the north-east by Mozambique and Swaziland. Lesotho is contained entirely inside the borders of South Africa. South Africa is one o, was out of the question for most Zionists as they wanted an egalitarian state.
The only viable solution seemed to be a partition of Palestine. But however the land was partitioned, the part belonging to Jews would contain an Arab majority or at least a very large Arab minority. For some of the Zionist leadership transfer of a large Arab population appeared to be the only solution.
The idea of transfer was not, in 1947-1949, when it actually happened, a new one. In June 12June 12 is the 163rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (164th in leap years), with 202 days remaining. Events 1381 Peasants' Revolt: In England rebels arrive at Blackheath. 1653 First Anglo-Dutch War: Battle of the Gabbard lasted until June 13., 1895Events January events January 5 Dreyfus Affair: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. February events February 14 First showing of Oscar Wilde's last play The Importance of Being Earnes Theodore Herzl wrote in his diary:
To Zionists it was of uttermost importance that the transfer plans would not become known to the world as that would lower international support for Zionists.
Department, declared:
In 1937 the Peel Commission gave extra fuel to the transfer thinking. It recommended that Britain should withdraw from Palestine and that the land should be partitioned between Jews and Arabs. It also recommended that 225,000 Arabs should be transferred out of the proposed Jewish state. This was a huge step forward for the Zionists. Until then, transfer hadn't been discussed as an option with outsiders but now "the Royal Commission" came to the same solution to the problem as the Zionists had. David Ben-Gurion didn't spare the supleratives when he wrote in his diary:
Despite the fact that the notion of transfer had been proposed by a royal commission and that David Ben-Gurion had seen fit to speak of it in the plenum of the Zionist Congress, the subject was still very sensitive.
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