The first phase of that war began on 30 November 1947,[30] a day after the United Nations adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine, which split the territory into Jewish and Arab states, and an international Jerusalem.

[21]: 134  On 29–30 March the intelligence service of Haganah, the main Zionist paramilitary, reported that "the Arab Higher Committee was no longer approving exit permits for fear of [causing] panic in the country.

[21]: 125 According to Ilan Pappé, the Zionists organised a campaign of threats,[6]: 55  consisting of the distribution of threatening leaflets, "violent reconnaissance" and, after the arrival of mortars, the shelling of Arab villages and neighborhoods.

[44] Israel began engaging in biological warfare in April, poisoning the water supplies of certain villages, including a successful operation that caused a typhoid epidemic in Acre in early May, and an unsuccessful attempt in Gaza that was foiled by the Egyptians in late May.

[46][47] 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.

"[21]: 198–207 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.

[50][51][52][53] A 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.

Avnery (1971), explaining the Zionist rationale, says, 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.

[54]Based on research of numerous archives, Morris provides an analysis of Haganah-induced flight: Undoubtedly, as was understood by IDF intelligence, the most important single factor in the exodus of April–June was Jewish attack.

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.

[56] 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.

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.

[59] 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: At least 55% of the total of the exodus was caused by our (Haganah/IDF) operations.

Clearly, we could not leave [Lydda's] hostile and armed populace in our rear, where it could endanger the supply route [to the troops who were] advancing eastward... Allon repeated the question: What is to be done with the population?

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).

[21]: 448 Glazer[69] 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.

It was in this context that Ben-Gurion then ordered Yigael Yadin extend Israel's biological warfare operations abroad, beginning with the poisoning of Cairo's water network with toxic bacteria.

(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.

[21]: 492  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.

It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and indeed, offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries.

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).

[89] 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.

Among these laws were: Following the large-scale declassification of Israeli archival material in the 1980s, additional information about the circumstances surrounding the expulsion and flight of Palestinians became available, contributing to modern understandings of these events.

[114] 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.

[116] 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.

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 the "post-Zionist" view).

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.

[129] Of Karsh, Shlaim has written that he gives "a selective and tendentious account designed to exonerate the Jewish side of any responsibility" for some of the events that took place in 1948 and that he engages in "distort[ion] and misrepresent[ation of] the work of his opponents".

[132][133][134] 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.

"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.