impact of this carnage on the Arab population of Palestine was immense and accelerated the flight of villagers in other areas of the country. Later, I tried to interrogate the soldiers who took part in the action. They maintained that the massacre was not premeditated, that their local commander lost his head after some of his men were killed by Arab snipers. But while Dir-Yassin became a symbol, it was by no means an isolated incident. Killings of this nature had been perpetrated by both sides previously and many more took place subsequently. After the indiscriminate killing of Hebrews by Arabs at the beginning of the war, the civilians of both sides expected to be annihilated if they fell into enemy hands.
In the course of a scientific conference in 1957, General Yigal Allon, who had been in command of operations in the north during that phase, said, rather delicately, "While planning the capture of the Arab part of Safed, it was not our intention to prevent the flight of the Arab population." Moreover, the historical department of the Israeli Army has published battle plans which show that during that phase, the combat brigades had orders to push the Arab population out of certain parts of the country, in order to establish defensive areas in preparation for the expected invasion of the Arab armies.
The third phase started with this invasion on May 15, and lasted until the end of the war in 1949. The regular armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon invaded the territory that had been Palestine, with the express intent of liquidating the Hebrew state newly created. They faced the Haganah Army which became, in June, officially the Israel Defense Army (a name which allowed for the inclusion of the word Haganah, meaning defense). The fighting was interrupted several times by cease-fire orders of the United Nations, which were conveniently ignored whenever one side thought it could gain an advantage thereby.
I believe that during this phase, the eviction of Arab