Further to Teribus' post above. It wasn't in fact "the Arabs of Palestine", even insofar as they constituted any identifiable single entuty, who rejected the two-state UN proposal of 1948. Left to themselves they might well have accepted it. But it was their ethnic "brothers" in all the surrounding states -- Saudi, Lebanon, Transjordan, Egypt, Yemen, Iran, Iraq - who forbade them to do so, ordering them to leave their homes 'temporarily' while they marched in and destroyed the new-found State of Israel. As it turned out, they weren't quite such efficient "Drivers of the Jews into the Sea" as they had anticipated. With results still being felt, as we all know.

~M~