Summary: Reading Time: 5 minutesFor Jewish people the <a href="http://www.theendofhistory.net/global-issues/middle-east-history-politics/israeli-palestinian-conflict/complete-balanced-guide-israeli-palestinian-conflict-chapter-5-jewish-holocaust/">holocaust</a> is recognized as the darkest days of their modern history. For Palestinian people “al nakba,” the catastrophe, holds that place and is the great Palestinian crisis of the 20th century. The paradox of the results of the 1948 Arab Israeli War was that it meant a new stage of existence for the Jewish people. They had a home, a place of safety, and ground to fight for. For the Palestinian Arabs it meant the exact opposite. The 1948 Arab Israeli War was their undoing. After the armistices were concluded they had no home, no ground to fight for, and no rights.<br> <br> Shaping the Palestinian Crisis<br> By the end of the Palestine Mandate, as the British were leaving, Palestine had a population of 1.2 million Arabs. By the end of the Civil War and the 1948 Arab Israeli War, more than 750,000 of these Palestinian Arabs had fled or had been expelled. Among those who were expelled, more than half of those expulsions took place during the Civil War. Among the leaders and policies of the Zionist organizations there had been a deliberate and specific plan to leverage the chaos of the Civil War and remove as much of the Palestinian Arab population as possible. More than 400 Palestinian villages were depopulated by the IDF.<br> <br> That Ben-Gurion’s ultimate aim was to evacuate as much of the Arab population as possible from the Jewish state can hardly be doubted, if only from the variety of means he employed to achieve his purpose…most decisively, the destruction of whole villages and the eviction of their inhabitants…even [if] they had not participated in the war and had stayed in Israel hoping to live in peace and equality, as promised in the Declaration of Independence. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679720987/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=jbshreve-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0679720987&linkId=76f7ef004e41a6dea12edd1fde66a0b0">Israeli author Simha Flapan The Birth of Israel</a><br> <br> During May [1948] ideas about how to consolidate and give permanence to the Palestinian exile began to crystallize, and the destruction of villages was immediately perceived as a primary means of achieving this aim…[Even earlier,] On 10 April, Haganah units took Abu Shusha… The village was destroyed that night… Khulda was leveled by Jewish bulldozers on 20 April… Abu Zureiq was completely demolished… Al Mansi and An Naghnaghiya, to the southeast, were also leveled. . .By mid-1949, the majority of [the 350 depopulated Arab villages] were either completely or partly in ruins and uninhabitable. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521338891/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=jbshreve-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0521338891&linkId=effeda917ffa52888e9ea983a5ce7395">Israeli author Benny Morris The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949</a><br> <br> Other historians report that as many as 33 massacres of Palestinian Arabs took place during this time. Leaders among the Zionists believed that the Civil War afforded to the Jews of Palestine the opportunity to get away things they would not otherwise be able to get away with once the partition was in place. They believed that the only hope for a Jewish homeland was to rid Palestine of its Arab population while they could get away with it.<br> The Palestinian Crisis and Plan Dalet <br> <br> The underground militia, including Begin and the Irgun, were among the most active extremist organizations. Their activity was included among the various massacres against Palestinian Arabs. There were more official policies and strategies among the leaders of the Zionists in Palestine however.
