ABSTRACT
The events in Palestine in 1948-9, which resulted in the Arab mass exodus, were far more complex and confused than either coherent explanation indicates. A great deal of fresh light is shed on the multiple and variegated causation of the Arab exodus in a document which has recently surfaced, entitled “The Emigration of the Arabs of Palestine in the Period 1/12/1947-1/6/1948 (t’nu’at ha’hagira shel arvi’yei eretz yisrael ba’t’kufa 1/12/1947-1/6/1948)”.1 Dated 30 June 1948, it was produced by the Israel Defence Forces Intelligence Service during the first weeks of the First Truce (11 June-9 July) of the 1948 war. The document consists of two parts, typewritten in stencil foolscap pages: a nine-page text and a fifteen-page appendix. The text analyses the number of refugees, the stages of the exodus, its causes, the destinations of the refugee communities, and the problem of their initial absorption in the host areas. The appendix, proceeding district by district, traces-village by village-the dates, causes, and destinations of the emigration, and the numbers involved. The details in the appendix serve in large measure as the basis for the statistical breakdown in the text. The report does not state who ordered the Intelligence Service to produce the analysis and why. It is possible that the analysis was produced at the behest of Defence Minister and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion or acting IDF chief of staff and OC Operations, General Yigael Yadin. These men, like other members of the newly formed IDF General Staff, no doubt wanted to understand the Palestinian exodus, which had at first surprised, indeed astonished, the Yishuv leaders.2
