[1][2][3][4] This period of the exodus[5] was characterised predominantly by forced expulsion during the consolidation of the state of Israel and the growing tension along ceasefire lines that ultimately lead to the 1956 Suez Crisis.
During the consolidation period, Israel was more intent on gaining control of the demilitarized zones on the Syrian, Jordanian and Egyptian fronts than on its image abroad.
[citation needed] Established in 1954, the committee had representatives from the police and the domestic intelligence agency, Shabak, as well as the prime minister's consultant for Arab affairs and the commander-in-chief of military rule.
[citation needed] The Registration of Residents ordinance of 1949 left unregistered Palestinian Arabs without legal status and vulnerable to deportation.
[19] It was naturally difficult to prevent refugees who were living on a bare subsistence level from crossing lines beyond which they hoped to find fodder for their hungry sheep, or for scarce fuel.
In the most serious case of this kind, Egypt complained that on the 7 and 14 October 1950, Israeli military forces shelled and machine-gunned the Arab villages of Abasan al-Kabira and Beit Hanoun in the Egyptian-controlled territory of the Gaza strip, killing seven civilians and the wounding twenty.
[21] The Israeli government claimed that as an extension of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Arab countries were aiding and abetting infiltrators by using them as guerillas.
Part of the Border police personnel were attached to the Military Governor’s office and placed under ‘Abd-al-‘Azim al-Saharti to guard public installations in the Gaza strip.
[22] The IDF adopted a free fire policy which included patrols, ambushes, laying mines, setting booby traps and carrying out periodic search operations in Israeli Arab villages.
[25] During anti-infiltration operations, Israeli forces committed atrocities including gang rape, murder and the dumping of 120 suspected infiltrators in the Avara desert without water.
The early reprisal raids failed to achieve their objectives and managed to increase hatred for Israel amongst Arab countries and refugees.
[28] According to statistics taken from the official records of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan/Israel Mixed Armistice Commission for the period of June 1949 through December 1952, Jordan complained of 37 instances of expulsion of Arabs from Israel.
(31 October 1948, Moshe Carmel) The UN's acting Mediator, Ralph Bunche, reported that United Nations Observers recorded extensive looting of villages in Galilee by Israeli forces, which carried away goats, sheep and mules.
[33]The villages of al Mansura, Tarbikha, Iqrit and Kafr Bir'im in Galilee were invaded by IDF forces during late October and early November 1948 after Operation Hiram.
Seeing the elderly, women and children living in the cave, the Minister of Police Bechor Sheetrit suggested that the villagers move further south to the town of Jish, where there were 400 abandoned houses, "until the military operations are over".
[36] Archbishop Elias Chacour, originally a resident of Iqrit, relates in his autobiography how in the spring of 1949, the IDF rounded up all the men and older boys in the village (including his own father and three eldest brothers), and trucked them to the border with Jordan.
The result was devastating: on 16 September 1953 the Israeli air force and army in a joint operation bombed the village until it was completely destroyed.
[38] On 16 January 1949, an attempt to move the remaining Palestinian Arab inhabitants of Tarshiha to the neighbouring towns of Mi'ilya and Majd al Kurum was prevented by UN and Christian clerical intercession.
[41][42] During the Lausanne Peace Conference the US consul, William Burdett, reported on a meeting of the Jordan/Israel Armistice Commission which dealt with a case where 1,000 (UN estimates 1,500) Palestinian Arab inhabitants of Baqa al-Gharbiyye had been expelled and forced across the ceasefire line.
[45] Egypt accepted the expelled civilian Palestinian Arabs from Majdal on humanitarian grounds as they would otherwise have been exposed to "torture and death".
[46] Ilan Pappé reports that the last gun-point expulsion occurred in 1953 where the residents of Umm al-Faraj were driven out and the village destroyed by the IDF.
On 15 July when the Israeli Army expelled the population of Wadi Fukin after the village had been transferred to the Israeli-occupied area under the terms of the Armistice Agreement concluded between Israel and the Jordan Kingdom.
[50] In the lake Huleh area, during 1951, Israel initiated a project to drain the marsh land to bring 15,000 acres (61 km2) into cultivation.
[54] 20 August 1950 Israeli authorities expelled into Egyptian territory all the Bedouin living in the demilitarized zone of Auja al-Hafir in Palestine.
Israel had been condemned by the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) in some instances but had taken no steps to allow the return of the Arabs.
On 22 September Commander Hutchison USNR of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan/Israel Mixed Armistice Commission (HKJMAC) went into the area and counted over 100 families, nearly 1,000 members of the es-Sani tribe.
On the new area at El Laqiya, for the next three years the es-Sani had made it productive to the extent that Israel then declared a quantity of their grain as surplus crop and demanded that it be sold to the Israeli government at a fixed price.
... On 15 September, the High Court in Jerusalem issued an order 'nisi* against the Military Governor and the Ministry of Defence against the enforced move of the tribe.