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During the creation of Israel, both before and after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and in the 1967 war a large part of the Palestinian population, 700.000-800.000 people, became refugees. Their homes and villages has either been destroyed or expropriated to Jews and they have never been allowed to return. Today some 5.5-6.5 million Palestinians are living in refugee camps in neighbouring Arab countries. Why and how they left is still today a very contested issue and the reasons presented differs alot from each other.

The official Israeli view has always been that it was the surrounding Arab nations who caused the refugee crisis by declaring war on Israel. They claim that the Arab leaders called the Palestinians to leave their homes:

"It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem." (radio broadcast by the Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station on April 3 1949 (Cyprus)

Their reason for doing this was, according to Israel:

1. To arouse Arab feelings of revenge

"The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea." (Kenneth Bilby, American journalist, covering the area before and during the war, in his book "New Star in the Near East", pp. 30-31, New York 1950)

2. To make way for the invading Arab armies

"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." (editorial in Jordanian newspaper "Falastin", February 19 1949, Amman, Jordan)

"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." Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, as quoted by Nimr el Hawari (the former Commander of the stine Arab Youth Organization) in his book 'Sir Am Nakbah' ("The Secret Behind the Disaster"), 1952 (Nazareth)

3. To artificially create an Arab refugee problem

The fleeing Palestinians was promised a triumphant return as it would only be a matter of a few weeks before the invading Arab armies had crushed the infant Jewish state.

"This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake posession of their country." Edward Atiyah (Secretary of the Arab League Office in London), as quoted in 'The Arabs', p. 183 (London 1955)

"The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade... 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." (Habib Issa, in the daily US-published Lebanese newspaper Al Hoda, June 8 1951, New York)

But the Arabs suffered an astonishing unexpected defeat. Therefore as they were the aggressors, Israel argues, it is their duty to handle the refugee problem:

"I do not want to impugn anybody but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem." Emil Ghoury (Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee), as quoted in the Daily Telegraph, September 6 1948(Beirut)

At the time of the refugee crisis, for some 20 to 30 years afterwards, many Arab authorities heald that the refugee crisis was the result of Arab tactical decisions during the conflict. Some Palestinians today appear to deny the authenticity of these quotes, or hold that these Arabs were somehow secretly Zionists.

The Arab version is that most Palestinians were expulsed from their homes by the Israeli army.

During several months preceeding the declaration of Israel on May 14, 1948, Israeli forces destroyed dozens of Arab villages, mainly in the Jerusalem corridor, and expelled their citizens. In many cases, the inhabitants of these very villages participated in looting raids on Jewish traffic on the nearby Tel-Aviv-Jerusalem road; however Palestinians point out to at least one case when forces of two right-wing Jewish undergrounds (not under direct command of the Jewish leadership) committed attrocities, in an event known as the Deir Yassin incident.

Arabs often raise the claim that at midnight on May 14, when the British mandate was being retracted, the creation of the Jewish state was accompanied by the take-over by Jewish forces of certain areas evacuated by the British in Jerusalem (intended for international administration), as well as several chunks of territory designated for the proposed Arab state. However, as Israelis point out, the Arab leadership specifically declared that it would not create a Palestinian state, thus voiding the applicability of the U.N. partition proposals, but rather ask the powerful Jordanian Arab Legion and the Egyptian regular army to divide all of Palestine between Arabs. Two weeks after, the fears of the Jewish leadership realized, as on May 28, all of East Jerusalem (including the Jewish holy sites, which the Jews were forbidden to access for the following 19 years) fell to the Arab Legion.

On the day Israel proclaimed its independence there were already 300,000 Palestinian refugees. Many of them fled in terror from war.