From this site:
I can personally testify that in May, 1948, Ben-Gurion's public appeal to the Arabs of Haifa and Jaffa was widely spread and broadcast live and repeated over and again in the streets of these two towns, calling upon the Arabs to accept his outstretched hand in peace, and not to leave their homes and possessions as they were being urged by the Arab Higher Command.
I was in Haifa on 16th May, 1948 and I watched the Arabs as they calmly and joyfully lined up to be taken aboard the British warships to be transported to Egypt and Lebanon. There was no panic as they fully expected to return in a few days to take over all the Jewish property from the massacred Jews, as they were promised by their leaders. They were not "refugees". They considered themselves to be no more than "temporary evacuees" just for a few days, and it was a joyful holiday break for them.
My reading of various sources says that there were indeed a few places where Arabs were driven from their homes by victorious Israelis in the 1948, but those instances were very few and far between. For the most part, though, Israeli Arabs voluntarily left their homes at the urging of the Jordan, Syria, and Egyptian leaders who expected to drive the Jews into the sea. To the extent this history is correct, it seems to me the former Israeli Arabs have a bitter complaint against the former Arab leaders, much more so than against the Israel of today.
A far more important reason
http://tinyurl.com/42pmeb7
Posted by: Joshua | August 06, 2011 at 05:48 AM