During the War of Independence, some seven hundred thousand Arabs fled their homes. Benny Morris has shown that the Arabs left for many different reasons. In Jaffa, Haifa, and other large cities and towns, urban society simply collapsed, particularly as the Arab leadership fled. In other cases, rumors of Jewish atrocities, the vast majority of them

Much of the world denounced these new neighborhoods and settlements as illegitimate if not illegal, and blamed them for precipitating the Arab-Israeli conflict.

other words, by supporting the existence of the State of Israel, the US and the UK had crossed the Arab world and now, if they wanted oil, or allegiances, or strategic military intel, they had to pay for it. When Herter asked Khayyal to sit down with the Israelis and help find a solution, Khayyal answered that no one would talk with the Israelis. F

BEYOND THE LEGITIMATE ACCUSATION that Jewish forces at times forced Arab populations to leave their homes, this portion of the war also prompted what the historian Benny Morris called the “atrocity factor”37—allegations that in the midst of the War of Independence, Jewish forces committed numerous