The Near East Broadcasting Station in Cyprus declared that "It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem."[12]

Sir John Troutbeck, a British diplomat in Cairo, went to Gaza on a fact-finding mission in June 1949. He reported that while the Palestinian Arab refugees "express no bitterness against the Jews […] they speak with the utmost bitterness of the Egyptians and other Arab states. 'We know who our enemies are,' they will say, and they are referring to their Arab brothers who, they declare, persuaded them unnecessarily to leave their homes."[13]

In the case of Ein Karem, William O. Douglas recorded that "the villagers were told by the Arab leaders to leave. It apparently was a strategy of mass evacuation, whether or not necessary as a military or public safety measure." From eyewitness accounts, Douglas found that this, along with fear of Jewish attack, was a key reason for the exodus from Ein Karem.[14]

Morris also documented that the Arab Higher Committee ordered the evacuation of "several dozen villages, as well as the removal of dependents from dozens more in April-July 1948. "The invading Arab armies also occasionally ordered whole villages to depart, so as not to be in their way." [15]

A May 3, 1948 Time Magazine article states:

The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by orders of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city. More than pride and defiance was behind the Arab orders. By withdrawing Arab workers, their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa. Jewish leaders said wishfully: 'They'll be back in a few days. Already some are returning.'
'One entire jetty,' cabled TIME Correspondent Eric Gibbs, 'was packed with these refugees, sitting on their pathetic bundles or clutching them with the strength of despair. What did these simple, bewildered people seize in the moment of panic? A small Turkish carpet, a radio, a sewing machine were among the treasures. […] Hour after hour they sat, waiting for barges, British landing craft and other odd boats now doing ferry service across the blue bay to Acre.' Other thousands fled to the Arab-held hills near Nablus.[16]

Evidence such as this led Shmuel Katz to conclude in his book Battleground "that the Arab refugees were not driven from Palestine by anyone. The vast majority left, whether of their own free will or at the orders or exhortations of their leaders, always with the same reassurance-that their departure would help in the war against Israel."[17] He explains that "The Arabs are the only declared refugee group who became refugees not by the action of their enemies or because of well-grounded fear of their enemies, but by the initiative of their own leaders."[18]


[edit] Claims by Arab sources that support that the flight was instigated by Arab leaders
Former Prime Minister of Syria Khalid al-Azm recalled in his memoirs:

Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees to their country, while it is we who made them leave it. […]
We brought disaster upon one million Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave their land, their homes, their work and their industry. We have rendered them dispossessed, unemployed, whilst every one of them had work or a trade by which he could gain his livelihood.[19]

After the war, a few Arab leaders tried to present the Palestinian exodus as a victory by claiming to have planned it. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Said was later quoted as saying: "We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down."[20]

Contemporary Jordanian politician Anwar Nusseibeh believed that the fault for the exodus and military loss was with the Arab commanders: