Comment by reliabilityguy
1 day ago
> who were not expelled by Israel in 1948
A large fraction of “expelled” Palestinians were “expelled” because Arab armies told them to leave for the time of fighting. For some reason you ignore this fact and put it all on Israel “expelling” people.
That's not true. It's a nationalist myth in Israel that was thoroughly debunked by none other than Israeli historians 40 years ago.
Palestinians overwhelmingly fled because:
* They were forced to at gunpoint by Zionist/Israeli forces, as at Ramle, Lod and many other places.
* Their towns came under direct attack by Zionist forces, as at Haifa and many other places.
* They feared for their lives, especially after Zionist massacres of Arab civilians at places like Deir Yassin became known.
This has been documented in great detail by Israeli historians for each Palestinian town.
For example, much of the population of Gaza comes from Palestinian towns that used to exist in what is now southern Israel. They were driven out and their towns were largely razed by Zionist forces in Operation Barak. Zionist forces had explicit orders to clear out the Arab population, which is what they did with extreme ruthlessness (including atrocities that are too horrible to describe on HN, but which you can read about in histories of the operation).
Well, Google says otherwise, eg with Haifa. So, it is not a clear cut. Saying that it was all evil zionists is history revisionism.
Moreover, the Arab-Israeli war was full of expulsions from both sides. My original point still stands.
Haifa is a cut-and-dry case. There was a massive attack by Zionist paramilitaries on the Arab neighborhoods of Haifa in April 1948, which ended with almost the entire Arab population fleeing.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Haifa_(1948)
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