I found some good info today that I was looking for. In another thread, I posted this question...
I have heard the following occurred, but I don't have any documentation to support. Can anyone help me document if this is correct?
I heard that during the 1967 Six Day War, Egypt told the Palestinians and the world that they were going to attack Israel and told the Palestinians to leave Jerusalem and Israel so Egypt could attack Jerusalem without injuring the Palestinians. The Palestinians evacuated the area in support of Egypt so they could then go back into Jerusalem and the Israeli state and take the land. After Egypt and Jordan etc lost the 6 day war, the Palestinians wanted to return to take control of the land / homes that they evacuated.
Is this correct?
I found a book that has some good quotes regarding the Palestinians evacuating their land. I was incorrect on the timeline but the principle is the same.
The Arabs are the only declared refugees 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. For nearly a generation, those leaders have willfully kept as many people as they possibly could in degenerating squalor, preventing their rehabilitation, and holding out to all of them the hope of return and of “vengeance” on the Jews of Israel, to whom they have transferred the blame for their plight....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. Attacks by Palestinian Arabs on the Jews had begun two days after the United Nations adopted its decision of November 29, 1947, to divide western Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. The seven neighboring Arab states Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Egypt then prepared to invade the country as soon as the birth of the infant State of Israel was announced.
The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the ‘Zionist gangs’ very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile.” [Sada at Tanub, August 16, 1948]
“This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab 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 retake possession of their country.”
Kenneth Bilby, one of the Americans who covered Palestine for several weeks during the war of 1948, wrote soon afterwards on his experience and observations:
“The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea.” [New Star in the Near East (New York, 1950), pp. 30-31]
These excerpts are from Shmuel Katz, “Battleground: Fact & Fantasy in Palestine.”
I can't post the link since I am a newbie.