Editing Population transfer (section)

===Palestine===
{{See also|Nakba|1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight|Causes of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight|1949–1956 Palestinian expulsions|Naksa|Gaza Strip evacuations}}
The [[1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight]], also known as "the [[Nakba]]", was the ethnic cleansing of around 750,000 Palestinian Arabs during the [[1948 Palestine war]] from the part of [[Mandatory Palestine]] that became Israel. The bulk of the Palestinian refugees ended up in the [[Gaza Strip]] (under [[Egypt]]ian rule between 1949 and 1967) and the [[West Bank]] (under Jordanian rule between 1949 and 1967), [[Jordan]], [[Syria]] and [[Lebanon]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Ilan |last=Pappé |author-link=Ilan Pappé |date=2006 |title=The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine |location=Oxford |publisher=Oneworld |page=}}</ref>{{pn|date=May 2024}}

During the war, the [[Haganah]] devised [[Plan Dalet]], which some scholars interpret to have been primarily aimed at ensuring the expulsion of Palestinians,{{sfn|Pappé|2006|pp=xii, 86–126|ps=: "this... blueprint spelled it out clearly and unambiguously: the Palestinians had to... each brigade commander received a list of the villages or neighborhoods that had to be occupied, destroyed, and their inhabitants expelled"}}<ref name="Plan">{{cite journal |last=Khalidi |first=W. |author-link=Walid Khalidi |url=https://www.scribd.com/doc/19199199/Plan-Dalet-Master-Plan-for-the-Conquest-of-Palestine-by-Walid-Khalidi |title=Plan Dalet: master plan for the conquest of Palestine |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170819143040/https://www.scribd.com/doc/19199199/Plan-Dalet-Master-Plan-for-the-Conquest-of-Palestine-by-Walid-Khalidi |archive-date=August 19, 2017 |journal=[[Journal of Palestine Studies]] |volume=18 |number=1 |date=1988 |pages=4–33|doi=10.2307/2537591 |jstor=2537591 }} (published earlier in ''Middle East Forum'', November 1961)</ref> but that interpretation is disputed. [[Efraim Karsh]] states that most of the Arabs who fled left of their own accord or were pressured to leave by their fellow Arabs despite Israeli attempts to convince them to stay.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Karsh |first=Efraim |url=http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/mems/people/staff/academic/karsh/articles/WerethePalestiniansExpelled.pdf |title=Were the Palestinians Expelled? |magazine=[[Commentary (magazine)|Commentary]] |access-date=August 6, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140224112045/http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/mems/people/staff/academic/karsh/articles/WerethePalestiniansExpelled.pdf |archive-date=February 24, 2014}}</ref>

The idea of the transfer of Arabs from Palestine had been considered about half a century beforehand.<ref>{{cite book |title=A Historical Survey of Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine, 1895–1947 |first=Chaim |last=Simons |date=2003 |publisher= |page=}}</ref>{{pn|date=May 2024}}<ref>{{cite book |first=Benny |last=Morris |author-link=Benny Morris |title=Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–1999 |location=New York |date=1999 |page=139 |quote=For many Zionists, beginning with Herzl, the only realistic solution lay in transfer. From 1880 to 1920, some entertained the prospect of Jews and Arabs coexisting in peace. But increasingly after 1920, and more emphatically after 1929, for the vast majority a denouement of conflict appeared inescapable. Following the outbreak of 1936, no mainstream leader was able to conceive of future coexistence and peace without a clear physical separation between the two peoples—achievable only by way of transfer and expulsion.}}</ref>

For example, [[Theodor Herzl]] wrote in his diary in 1895 that the [[Zionist]] movement "shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country."<ref>''The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl'', vol. 1 (New York: Herzl Press and Thomas Yoseloff, 1960), pp. 88, 90</ref> That interpretation of Herzl has been disputed.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Edward |last2=Bogdanor |first2=Paul |title=The Jewish Divide Over Israel |publisher=Transaction |year=2006 |pages=251–2 |quote=[The diary entry] had already been a feature of Palestinian propaganda for decades.... Any discussion of relocation was clearly limited to the specific lands assigned to the Jews, rather than the entire territory. Had Herzl envisaged the mass expulsion of population... there would have been no need to discuss its position in the Jewish entity.}}</ref> Forty years later, one of the recommendations in the Report of the British [[Peel Commission]] in 1937 was for a transfer of Arabs from the area of the proposed Jewish state, and it even included a compulsory transfer from the plains of Palestine. That recommendation was not initially objected to by the British Government.<ref>{{cite book |first=Benny |last=Morris |author-link=Benny Morris |date=2003 |title=The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited |chapter=The Idea of Transfer in Zionist Thinking |publisher= |page=}}</ref>{{pn|date=May 2024}}

Scholars have debated [[David Ben-Gurion]]'s views on transfer, particularly in the context of the [[1937 Ben-Gurion letter]], but according to [[Benny Morris]], Ben-Gurion "elsewhere, in unassailable statements... repeatedly endorsed the idea of “transferring” (or expelling) Arabs, or the Arabs, out of the area of the Jewish state-to-be, either "voluntarily" or by compulsion."<ref>[[Michael Rubin (historian)|Michael Rubin]] and [[Benny Morris]] (2011), [http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/07/ben-gurion-herzl-quotes-morris-rubin/ Quoting Ben Gurion: An Exchange] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141020181226/http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/07/ben-gurion-herzl-quotes-morris-rubin/ |date=2014-10-20 }}, [[Commentary (magazine)]], quote: "...the focus by my critics on this quotation was, in any event, nothing more than (an essentially mendacious) red herring – as elsewhere, in unassailable statements, Ben-Gurion at this time repeatedly endorsed the idea of “transferring” (or expelling) Arabs, or the Arabs, out of the area of the Jewish state-to-be, either “voluntarily” or by compulsion."</ref>

[[Gush Etzion]] and [[List of villages depopulated during the Arab–Israeli conflict#Jewish villages 2|Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem]] were depopulated by following the [[Jordanian annexation of the West Bank]]. The population was absorbed by the new [[State of Israel]]; and many of the locations were repopulated after the [[Six-Day War]] in 1967. During that war, Arabs again faced mass displacement, known as the [[Naksa]]. Estimates range between 280,000 and 325,000 displaced, many of whom had been living in the West Bank after being expelled or fleeing there during the [[Nakba]] between 1947 and 1949.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.science.co.il/Arab-Israeli-conflict/articles/Frantzman-2007-08-16.php |title=Ethnic cleansing of Jews by Arabs in pre-state Israel |website=www.science.co.il |access-date=May 4, 2018 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180115001827/https://www.science.co.il/Arab-Israeli-conflict/articles/Frantzman-2007-08-16.php |archive-date=January 15, 2018}}</ref><ref name="History of the War of Independence: The first month">Milstein, U. "[https://books.google.com/books?id=CviXmYN64xQC&dq=gush+etzion&pg=PA356 History of the War of Independence: The first month] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180115001833/https://books.google.cz/books?id=CviXmYN64xQC&pg=PA356&dq=gush+etzion&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwix8OaC8NfYAhXMfFAKHS_ODd8Q6AEIMzAD |date=2018-01-15 }}"</ref><ref>A Just Zionism: On the Morality of the Jewish State, Gans C, Oxford University Press "[https://books.google.com/books?id=LXziBwAAQBAJ&q=ethnic+cleansing+of+Jews+after+1948+war%22&pg=PT103] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180115001644/https://books.google.cz/books?id=LXziBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT103&dq=ethnic+cleansing+of+Jews+after+1948+war&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEsd2w9NfYAhUPZlAKHU1QCOAQ6AEIRDAF|date=2018-01-15}}</ref><ref>Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017, Ian Black, Grove Press, 2017</ref>