Who told the Arabs ("Palestinians") to flee from Palestine?

There is certainly ample evidence that the Arabs were told by their own leaders to flee. Some examples:

“The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two,” Monsignor George Hakim, a Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Galilee told the Beirut newspaper, Sada al­-Janub (August 16, 1948). “Their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile.”

On April 3, 1949, the Near East Broadcasting Station (Cyprus) said: “It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem.”

“The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies,” according to the Jordanian newspaper Filastin (February 19, 1949).

One refugee quoted in the Jordan newspaper, Ad Difaa (September 6, 1954), said: “The Arab government told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.”

“The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade,” said Habib Issa in the New York Lebanese paper, Al Hoda (June 8, 1951). “He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean. . . Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.”

Even Jordan's King Abdullah (grandfather of the present King Abdullah), writing in his memoirs, blamed Palestinian leaders for the refugee problem:

The tragedy of the Palestinians was that most of their leaders had paralyzed them with false and unsubstantiated promises that they were not alone; that 80 million Arabs and 400 million Muslims would instantly and miraculously come to their rescue.

There were no free Arab leaders at the time and keep in mind most were occupied by the English. The 1948 war was a fake war by all means the so called Arab army was lead by English generals and most of the Arab leaders were English subjects.

The Arab fleeing (about 20 miles down the road) was largely orchestrated by the Grand Mufti Amin al-Huesseni

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a well-known ally of Adolf Hitler told the 'native' peasant farmers to flee, with the assurance that after the Jews had been thrown into the sea, that they would be free to return to 'their' lands. The two main flaws, were that a) the lands weren't 'theirs', they belonged to absentee Arab landlords, who were worried that the founding of a Democratic nation would encourage the rebellion of those they had trodden underfoot for centuries; b), the greater percentage of the Land had already been sold by those same corrupt absentee land owners, who were more keen to make a fast buck from the Jewish Agency (who bought the Land with donations from Jewish philanthropists from all over the world - even though the Land had been stolen from the Jews in the first place during Roman rule and the subsequent rise of the Ottoman Empire)

The third flaw, was that the Jewish army, fighting for their rightful Homeland was smaller, but more determined.

Why dont you ask the old so called refugees they will remember. They have cursed those Arab leaders who told them to get out of Israel. The rest who remained and were protected by the Israeli army are now full citizens.

Approximately half of the total 750,000 1948 Palestine refugees were driven from their homes before Israel was created, with the remaining half beeing driven out by the time the ceasefire with Syria was concluded in the summer of 1949, cementing the ceasefire agreements between the newly established State of Israel and its neighbouring Arab states.The Zionist Movement and subsequently the State of Israel used economic, military and questionable legal methods to expel the Palestinians from their homes. In the early stages of the conflict, economic tactics played a very important role. Energy supply and transportation infrastructure were almost entirely under Zionist control. Important Palestinian cities were starved out by blockades and cutting transportation links to the surrounding Palestinian villages. As a result, there were already chronic food shortages in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem by January 1948, well before the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948. At this stage, many of the well to do Palestinian families with connections to other parts of the Arab world left Palestine. The following quote was taken from the war diary of David Ben Gurion the first Prime Minister of the State of Israel: “The strategic objective [of the Jewish forces] was to destroy the urban communities, which were the most organized and politically conscious sections of the Palestinian people. This was not done by house-to house fighting inside the cities and towns, but by the conquest and destruction of the rural areas surrounding most of the towns. This technique led to the collapse and surrender of Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberias, Safed, Acre, Beit-Shan, Lydda, Ramleh, Majdal, and Beersheba. Deprived of transportation, food, and raw materials, the urban communities underwent a process of disintegration, chaos, and hunger, which forced them to surrender.”

Now Tal: Ask yourself, would anyone living in Israel today leave their homes? No! Why? Now ask yourself why anyone would just give up their homes, land , farms , businesses, for a life as a "so called" refugee. Ask me I worked and lived in a Palestinian Refugee camp for 3 years straight. Sell their soul to live in H***? With no human rights , no citizenship, stateless, not able to work, own land, vote, Tell me these "so called refugees" for 60 years. Did ALL this by choice?

Educate yourself people , God willing Peace!

A picture is worth more than a thousand words!The second video is about the nakba(the tradgedy).

And I challange you Ivri to put any quote at all, you don't put one!

In the first few months of the civil war the climate in Palestine became volatile. Although throughout this period both Arab and Jewish leaders tried to limit hostilities between Jews and Arabs. According to historian Benny Morris, the period was marked by Arab initiatives and Jewish reprisals. On the other hand, Flapan points out a pattern in which terrorist attacks by Irgun and Lehi resulted in Arab retaliations and then 'the Haganah - while always condemning the actions of Irgun and Lehi - joined in with an inflaming counterretaliation. Typically the Jewish reprisals were directed against villages and neighborhoods from which attacks against Jews had originated, were more damaging than the provoking attack and included killing of armed and unarmed men, destruction of houses and sometimes expulsion of inhabitants. The Zionist terrorist groups of Irgun and Lehi reverted to their 1937-1939 strategy of placing bombs in crowded places such as bus stops, shopping centres and markets. Their attacks on British forces reduced British troops' ability and willingness to protect Jewish traffic.

The more evidence of all the horrors that the Zionists did ask me. Cheers!

It is well known that the Arab leaders told the Palestinians to leave. What is your point?

Good Luck!!!

the bullets seemed to convince them.