“The Palestinians left voluntarily in 1948, because Arab leaders told them to leave”

The earliest documented assessment comes from the Israeli side itself. On 30 June 1948 the Intelligence Service of the Israel Defence Forces completed a report, “Migration of Eretz Yisrael Arabs between December 1, 1947 and June 1, 1948,” which attributed “at least 55% of the overall migration movement” to direct Haganah operations, about 15% to the actions of the Irgun and Lehi — “some 70% of the residents left their communities and migrated as a result of these actions” — and only “some 5%” to “orders and directives issued by Arab institutions and gangs.” The same report notes that “Arab institutions tried to counter… the evacuation and restrain the migration waves,” with the Arab Higher Committee imposing restrictions and penalties to depress flight. This is the opposite of the claim.

Modern Israeli historiography agrees on the core finding while debating intent and degree. Benny Morris, in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 (1987) and his 1986 Middle Eastern Studies article on the IDF intelligence analysis, documented that most communities fled under military assault or fear of it, and that outright expulsions occurred — most notoriously some 50,000–70,000 people driven from Lydda and Ramle in July 1948. Avi Shlaim (The Iron Wall, 2000) found no evidence of a general Arab evacuation order, and Ilan Pappé (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 2006) argued the expulsions followed from Plan Dalet. Erskine Childers, examining the BBC’s monitoring records of every Middle East broadcast through 1948 (The Spectator, 12 May 1961), reported finding no call from any Arab station for the population to leave. Historians still argue about how much of the exodus was deliberate policy — Morris resists the word “plan” while documenting “an atmosphere of transfer” from April 1948 — but the blanket evacuation order has been abandoned by serious scholarship on all sides.

The scale is also documented: the UN Economic Survey Mission estimated 726,000 Palestinian refugees in 1949. Israel then barred their return — as the UN Mediator Count Bernadotte recorded in 1948, his proposal for even a limited return was rejected by the Provisional Government — and passed the Absentees’ Property Law (1950) to take over their land and homes. Morris, asked by Ari Shavit in Haaretz (8 January 2004) whether Ben-Gurion was responsible for “a deliberate and systematic policy of mass expulsion,” answered: “From April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer… there is an atmosphere of transfer. The transfer idea is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea.”

Sources

• IDF Intelligence Service report, 30 June 1948, published in full — Akevot Institute
• “Survival of the Fittest”: Ari Shavit interviews Benny Morris — Haaretz, 8 January 2004
• The Right of Return of the Palestinian People — United Nations study (1978), on the refugee figures and Israel’s refusal of return