adopting a Hebrew version of the former name. The abandoned neighborhoods in the towns were filled with masses of new
immigrants. In Israeli textbooks, all mention of the former inhabitants was eliminated.
40. The signing of the armistice agreements at the beginning of 1949 did not put an end to the historical conflict. On the contrary, it raised it to a new and more intense level.
41. The new State of Israel dedicated its early years to the consolidation of its character as a homogeneous "Jewish state." Huge areas of land were expropriated from the "absentees" (the refugees who were not allowed back), from those officially designated as "present absentees" (Arabs who had stayed in Israel but were not accorded Israeli citizenship) and even from the Arab citizens of Israel, most of whose lands were taken over. On these lands, a dense network of Jewish communities was created. Jewish immigrants were invited and even induced to come en masse. This great effort increased the state's population several times over in just a few years.
42. At the same time, the state pursued a vigorous policy of obliterating the Palestinian national entity. With Israeli assistance, the monarch of Trans-Jordan, Abdullah, assumed control over the West Bank and since then there has been, in effect, an Israeli military guarantee for the existence of what became the
Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
43. The main rationale for the alliance between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom, which has already existed for three
generations, is to prevent the establishment of an independent and viable Palestinian state, which was-and still is-considered by the Israeli leadership a potential obstacle to the realization of the Zionist objective.
44. A historic change occurred at the end of the 1950s on the Palestinian side when Yassir Arafat and his associates founded the Palestinian Liberation Movement (Fatah), not only to conduct the fight against Israel but also to free the Palestinian cause from the hegemony of the Arab governments. It was no accident that this movement emerged after the failure of the great pan-Arab wave, whose most renowned representative was Gamal Abd-el-
Nasser. Up to this point many Palestinians had hoped to be
absorbed into a united pan-Arab nation. When this hope faded away, the separate national Palestinian identity reasserted itself.