It depends on what you mean by "forced" [h/t to AP]. Unfortunately, the polemics of this column from the Jerusalem Post detract from the main point of the piece:
Scant
attention was paid last week to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's
revelations on Al-Palestinia TV. Abbas talked about his youth in Safed, from
whence he routinely claims his family was forcibly driven out by Israeli troops
in 1948. ...
Fatah's cofounder reminisced at length about his Safed origins and haphazardly let the truth slip out.
"Until the nakba" (calamity in Arabic - the loaded synonym for Israeli independence), he recounted, his family "was well-off in Safed." When Abbas was 13, "we left on foot at night to the Jordan River... Eventually we settled in Damascus... My father had money, and he spent his money methodically. After a year, when the money ran out, we began to work.
"People were motivated to run away... They feared retribution from Zionist terrorist organizations - particularly from the Safed ones. Those of us from Safed especially feared that the Jews harbored old desires to avenge what happened during the 1929 uprising. This was in the memory of our families and parents... They realized the balance of forces was shifting and therefore the whole town was abandoned on the basis of this rationale - saving our lives and our belongings."
SO HERE it is from the mouth of the PA's head honcho himself. He ... verifies that nobody expelled Safed's Arabs. Their exile was voluntary, propelled by their extreme consciousness of guilt and expectation that Jews would be ruled by the same blood-feud conventions that prevail in Arab culture. ... [T]hey anticipated that Jews would do to them precisely what the Arabs had done to Safed's Jews. ...
SUCH WAS the uprising for which Abbas's kinfolk assumed they deserved just reckoning. Ironically, Jews were alarmed by the Arab exodus, figuring it presaged a formidable onslaught by invading Arab armies (which indeed came). In many areas (Haifa, for instance) Jews begged and pleaded with local Arabs to stay. But Arabs in Safed and elsewhere - heeding their leaders' exhortations to pull out and hounded by fears arising from their own vengeful traditions (but not Jewish ones) - did what was prudent in light of their surmise that Jews would behave according to Arab codes
Fatah's cofounder reminisced at length about his Safed origins and haphazardly let the truth slip out.
"Until the nakba" (calamity in Arabic - the loaded synonym for Israeli independence), he recounted, his family "was well-off in Safed." When Abbas was 13, "we left on foot at night to the Jordan River... Eventually we settled in Damascus... My father had money, and he spent his money methodically. After a year, when the money ran out, we began to work.
"People were motivated to run away... They feared retribution from Zionist terrorist organizations - particularly from the Safed ones. Those of us from Safed especially feared that the Jews harbored old desires to avenge what happened during the 1929 uprising. This was in the memory of our families and parents... They realized the balance of forces was shifting and therefore the whole town was abandoned on the basis of this rationale - saving our lives and our belongings."
SO HERE it is from the mouth of the PA's head honcho himself. He ... verifies that nobody expelled Safed's Arabs. Their exile was voluntary, propelled by their extreme consciousness of guilt and expectation that Jews would be ruled by the same blood-feud conventions that prevail in Arab culture. ... [T]hey anticipated that Jews would do to them precisely what the Arabs had done to Safed's Jews. ...
SUCH WAS the uprising for which Abbas's kinfolk assumed they deserved just reckoning. Ironically, Jews were alarmed by the Arab exodus, figuring it presaged a formidable onslaught by invading Arab armies (which indeed came). In many areas (Haifa, for instance) Jews begged and pleaded with local Arabs to stay. But Arabs in Safed and elsewhere - heeding their leaders' exhortations to pull out and hounded by fears arising from their own vengeful traditions (but not Jewish ones) - did what was prudent in light of their surmise that Jews would behave according to Arab codes
They feared retribution and felt forced out because of this fear? But they weren't forced out physically. Do they deserve a "right of return"? Probably not.