The Nakba

The Nakba ("Disaster") - the expulsion of Palestinian refugees from their homes in Israel - started in November 1947 with the UN resolution to partition Mandate Palestine. The Partition Plan was accepted by most Jews but rejected outright by the Palestinian leaders. At first the Palestinians were dominant both strategically and in numbers. The Jews had no heavy weapons. They had to rely on armoured buses and vans and on home-made mortars, but many of their officers had fought in the Allied armies in World War II and formed the backbone of Haganah, the armed defence force. The two smaller "terrorist" resistance groups - the Irgun and the Stern Group - joined Haganah in 1948, when Israel became independent, to form a united Israel Defence Force (IDF).
Atrocities were committed on both sides. The Jews had the military aim of keeping the roads clear between Jewish centres, and of removing non-Jews from strategically sensitive sites.
Israel became independent in May 1948 and was then able to buy artillery, tanks and aircraft, mainly from Eastern Europe. The Arab armies were driven back, but were able to retain the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Old City of Jerusalem. See Sheikh Jarrah.

Both sides could be accused of "ethnic cleansing": the Israelis prevented displaced Arabs from returning to their homes, many of which were occupied by Holocaust survivors released from Displaced Persons Camps in Western Europe or expelled from Arab States in North Africa and the Middle East. No Jews were allowed to remain in areas occupied by Egypt and Jordan, notably the Etzion bloc and the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem.

Roughly 750,000 were displaced, some to escape the fighting, some for fear of acts of terror such as the Deir-Yassin massacre, some expelled by the Israeli army.

The expulsions can be understood, but not condoned, in the aftermath of World War II when Germans were expelled en masse from Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Baltic States.

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