village to the next, during an Israeli advance, the population of the abandoned village retreated with the troops, fearing the worst. Israelis often say that the Arabs were afraid because they knew what they would have done to Israelis if the situations had been reversed; the truth is that it is natural for primitive people to abandon their homes for a few days while their village is under attack. If the Israeli kibbutzniks and other villagers did not do this, but stayed on and fought with the army to the very last, it was because of the unique character of these defense-minded villages-and the general feeling of all Israelis during the war that there was No Alternative, nowhere to go, that we had to stand and fight whatever the outcome might be. No Alternative-ein brera in Hebrew-was the slogan of the war, a way of thinking, a common resolve every individual in the new state held intensely during that crucial war.

Arab civilians were thus progressively pushed back, a few miles at a time, gradually getting farther and farther from their homes, but always believing that return was only a matter of days or weeks. When the armistice was signed, they suddenly found an international frontier standing between them and their homes. They had become refugees.

Only the Arabs who lived in areas overrun by the Israeli Army in lightning campaigns, when there was no time to flee (and when the Israeli Army was not interesting in having the roads blocked by refugees) remained in Israel. This was the case in Nazareth and the whole of Galilee. To this were added the Arabs living in a string of villages ceded by Jordan under the armistice agreement, after the fighting had come to an end.

* * *

For my part I think it is futile to try to fix the initial responsibility for the refugee tragedy on one side or the other. The exodus was inevitable, much as the war itself

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