Arab states, which had hardly emerged from the colonial era.
37 According to the United Nations plan, the Jewish State was supposed to receive 55% of Palestine, in which the Arabs would constitute almost half of the population. During the war, the Jewish State expanded its territory and ended up with 78% of the area of Palestine, which was left almost empty of Arabs. The Arab populations of Nazareth and some villages in the Galilee remained almost by chance; the villages in the Triangle were given to Israel as part of a deal by King Abdullah and their Arab inhabitants could not, therefore, be driven out.
38 In the war, some 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted. Some of them found themselves in the battle zone and fled, as civilians do in every war. Some were driven away by acts of terror, such as the Deir-Yassin massacre. Others were systematically expelled in the course of the ethnic cleansing.
39 No less important than the expulsion itself is the fact that the refugees were not allowed to return to their homes when the fighting was over, as is usual after a conventional war. Quite the contrary, the new State of Israel saw the removal of the Arabs very much as a blessing and proceeded to completely erase some 450 Arab villages. New Jewish villages were built on the ruins, often 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 !949 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 homogenous "Jewish State". Huge areas of land were expropriated from the "absentees" (the refugees who were not allowed back),from those officially