1948 Quotes from Arab Leaders

Below are quotes from some Arab Leaders regarding the Arab refugees. Historians documented David Ben-Gurion sending Golda Meir to try to persuade Arabs to coexist with Jews, but they refused. More than 50,000 Arabs fled Haifa alone (similar number to how many were explled by Russia during the Crimean War).

While today the biggest antisemites on Earth are desperate to paint all Arab refugees as a distinct “Palestinian” identity, they’re simply not. They come from distinct tribes, with different allegiance to Arab rulers. A huge percent also come from Syria, Jordan and other states, having no connection to Levant.

Some of these quotes, and even more, can be found here: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/myths-and-facts-the-refugees

“the Jewish Hagana asked (using loudspeakers) Arabs to remain at their homes but most of the Arab population followed their leaders who asked them to leave the country.”
— The Times of London, April 22 1948

"every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe."
— A British police report from Haifa, dated April 26, 1948

“the mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city... By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.”
— Time magazine reported in a May 3, 1948

“The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war.”
— General John Glubb “Pasha”, London Daily Mail August 12th, 1948

“The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the act of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem.”
–- Emile Ghoury, secretary of the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee, in an interview with the Beirut Telegraph September 6, 1948. (same appeared in The London Telegraph, August 1948);

“Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa, not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit... it was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.”
— The London weekly Economist, October 2, 1948

“We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.”
— Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, 1948

“The Arab states which had encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promise to help these refugees.”
-– The Jordanian daily newspaper Falastin, February 19, 1949.

“It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees’ flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem.”
-- Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949.

“They say ‘we know who our enemies are (referring to the Egyptians)’, declaring that their Arab brethren persuaded them unnecessarily to leave their homes… I even heard it said that many of the refugees would give a welcome to the Israelis if they were to come in and take the district over.”
— Sir John Troutbeck, British Middle East Office, Cairo, noted to superiors (1948-49) that refugees (in Gaza) have no bitterness against Jews, but harbor intense hatred toward Egyptians

“The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade... Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property to stay temporarily In neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of invading Arab armies mow them down.”
--Al Hoda, a New York-based Lebanese daily, June 8, 1951.

“The Arabs of Haifa fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel.”
— Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949

“Who brought the Palestinians to Lebanon as refugees, suffering now from the malign attitude of newspapers and communal leaders, who have neither honour nor conscience? Who brought them over in dire straits and penniless, after they lost their honor? The Arab states, and Lebanon amongst them, did it.”
-- The Beirut Muslim weekly Kul-Shay, August 19, 1951

“The Arab exodus from other villages was not caused by the actual battle but by the exaggerated description spread by Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews.”
— Palestinian refugee Yunes Ahmed Assad told a Jordanian newspaper in 1953
PS, I reposted a little girl’s concerns based on these “exaggerated descriptions”

“The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.”
-- A refugee quoted in Al Difaa (Jordan) September 6, 1954.

“The wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab states, and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and re-take possession of their country”.
-- Edward Atiyah (Secretary of the Arab League, London, The Arabs, 1955, p. 183)

“Israelis argue that the Arab states encouraged the Palestinians to flee. And, in fact, Arabs still living in Israel recall being urged to evacuate Haifa by Arab military commanders who wanted to bomb the city.”
— Newsweek, January 20, 1963.

“The 15th May, 1948, arrived ... On that day the mufti of Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead.”
-- The Cairo daily Akhbar el Yom, October 12, 1963.

“the fifth factor was the call by the Arab governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate it (Palestine) and leave for the bordering Arab countries. Since 1948, it is we who have demanded the return of the refugees, while it is we who made them leave. We brought disaster upon a million Arab refugees by inviting them and bringing pressure on them to leave. We have accustomed them to begging... we have participated in lowering their morale and social level... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson and throwing stones upon men, women and children...all this in the service of political purposes...”
-- Khaled el-Azm, Syrian prime minister after the 1948 War, in his 1972 memoirs, published in 1973. He is referencing 1948

“The Arab states succeeded in scattering the Palestinian people and in destroying their unity. They did not recognize them as a unified people until the states of the world did so, and this is regrettable. The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe.”
-- Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), from the official journal of the PLO, Falastin el-Thawra (“What We Have Learned and What We Should Do”), Beirut, March 1976.

“the one who made us leave was the Jordanian army because there were going to be battles and we would be under their feet. They told us, ‘Leave. In two hours, we will liberate it and then you’ll return.’”
— Fuad Khader, Arab refugee, explains on official PA television on May 15, 2013