Azzam Pasha

Azzam Pasha
The Secretary-General of the Arab League, , 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).

"We are already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development will be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean.... Brothers, Arabs of Palestine leave your land, homes and property and stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down."

Haj Amin Al-Husseini (uncle to Yasser Arafat)
Mufti of Jerusalem, Palestinian leader and notorious Nazi, mixed Nazi propaganda and Islam. Haj Al-Husseini drafted a proposal during WW2 (1940), requesting that Germany and Italy acknowledge the Arab right..

Haj Amin al-Hussaini

"..to settle the question of the Jewish elements in Palestine, and other Arab countries, in accordance with national and racial interests of the Arabs, and along lines, similar to those used to solve the Jewish question in Germany and Italy."

(Fritz Grobba, Peoples and Powers in the East, pp. 194-7, 207-8, Berlin, 1967; Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial, p.37, Harper, 1988).
 

Unlike the respected partition of India and the creation of the new Muslim State of Pakistan [resulting in over 10 million refugees], the Nov. 29, 1947 Partition Plan for Palestine was violently rejected by the Arabs, as they rejected the partition proposals of 1921 and 1937.

Then ensuing war, launched by Arabs and Palestinians, resulted in 630,000 Palestinian, and 820,000 Jewish, refugees.

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Arab Leaders Cause Exodus

An abundance of evidence exists demonstrating that Palestinians were encouraged to leave their homes to make way for the invading Arab armies.

(27, 000,000 Arabs V 600,000 Jews)

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, who declared:

"We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down."

The Economist, a frequent critic of the Zionists, reported on October 2, 1948:

"Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit....It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."

The Arab National Committee in Jerusalem, following the March 8, 1948, instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, ordered women, children and the elderly in various parts of Jerusalem to leave their homes:

"Any opposition to this order...is an obstacle to the holy war...and will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts"

The Arab Legion ordered the evacuation of all women and children from the town of Beisan. The Arab Liberation Army ordered the evacuation of another village south of Haifa.

In his memoirs, Haled al Azm, the Syrian Prime Minister in 1948/49, also admitted the Arab role in persuading the refugees to leave:

"Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return."

Jamal Al-Husseini, acting Chairman of the (Palestinian) Arab Higher Committee threatened on Nov. 24, 1947 that

"Palestine shall be consumed with fire and blood,if the Jews get any part of it."

The Nov. 29, 1947 Partition Plan was violently rejected by the Palestinians and the Arabs as they did with the partition proposals of 1921 and 1937. Then ensuing war, launched by Arabs and Palestinians, resulted in 630,000 Palestinian, and 820,000 Jewish, refugees.

Khaled al-Azam, Syrian Prime Minister 1949 (memoirs, 1973):

"We brought destruction upon the refugees, by calling on them to leave their homes."

London Economist (Oct. 2, 1948):

"The most potent of the factors [in the flight] were announcements made by the Palestinian-Arab Higher Committee, urging all Haifa Arabs to quit, intimating that those remaining would be regarded as renegades."

Almost 200,000 refugees left BEFORE the large scale war erupted in May 1948, while the Arabs had the upper hand! Arabs left Haifa and Jaffa, while British troops were still there, pleading with them to stay.
 

The British Mandate ordered Arabs and Jews to evacuate towns, where they were a minority. Arabs left (e.g. Tiberias), with encouragement of Arab countries, while Jews remained (e.g. Safed and its Arabs of Algerian origin). Arab evacuation - and the fall of Abd al-Kader al-Husseini in the Castel battle - was highlighted by Arab media, triggering a Domino Effect of further evacuations.
 

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After the Arabs' defeat in the 1948 war, their positions became confused: some Arab leaders demanded the "return" of the "expelled" refugees to their former homes despite the evidence that Arab leaders had called upon Arabs to flee. [Such as President Truman's International Development Advisory Board Report, March 7, 1951: "Arab leaders summoned Arabs of Palestine to mass evacuation... as the documented facts reveal..."] At the same time, Emile Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Command, called for the prevention of the refugees from "return." He stated in the Beirut Telegraph on August 6, 1948:

"it is inconceivable that the refugees should be sent back to their homes while they are occupied by the Jews.... It would serve as a first step toward Arab recognition of the state of Israel and Partition."

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