אדוארד עטיה – הבדלי גרסאות

 

==נושא שנוי במחלוקת==

{{ציטוט|אנגלית=כן|מרכאות=כן|תוכן=But apart from military defeat and the territorial loss of most of Palestine, an appalling human tragedy befell the Arab population of the country during the fighting. Seven or eight hundred thousand of the total Arab population of Palestine (of one-and-a-quarter millions) fled from the country or were driven out into Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. 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. But it was also, and in many parts of the country, largely due to a policy of deliberate terrorism and eviction followed by the Jewish commanders in the areas they occupied, and reaching its peak of brutality in the massacre of Deir Yassin.

There were two good reasons why the Jews should follow such a policy. First, the problem of harbouring within the Jewish State a large and disaffected Arab population had always troubled them. They wanted an exclusively Jewish state, and the presence of such a population that could never be assimilated, that would always resent its inferior position under Jewish rule and stretch a hand across so many frontiers to its Arab cousins in the surrounding countries, would not only detract from the Jewishness of Israel, but also constitute a danger to its existence. Secondly, the Israelis wanted to open the doors of Palestine to unrestricted Jewish immigration. Obviously, the fewer Arabs there were in the country the more room there would be for Jewish immigrants. If the Arabs could be driven out of the land in the course of the fighting, the Jews would have their homes, their lands, whole villages and towns, without even having to purchase them. And this is exactly what happened.|מקור=The Arabs, 1955, pp. 182-183}}