Reasons the Arabs fled

NOURA Erakat’s article “No choice but to continue the struggle” (May 19) refers.

My following comments have been taken from Alan Dershowitz’s book, The Case for Israel. Erakat writes of Israel’s “mass expulsion” of Palestinians during and after their attack on their Jewish neighbours in 1948.

The problem was created by a war initiated by the Arabs. It has been estimated that thousands of Arabs fled their homes during this phase of the Arab-initiated fighting.

The historian Benny Morris points out “that initially there was no Zionist policy to expel the Arabs or intimidate them into flight.

“During the second stage as well, there was no blanket policy of expulsion”.

But the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, declared a “Holy War”, and ordered his Muslim brothers to: “Murder the Jews. Murder them all!”

The Arabs were also aware of this, as I am sure that Erakat is. The Arabs feared that the triumphant

Jews would do to them as they would have done to the Jews had the battle gone against them and so they fled.

Israeli military commanders did order the evacuation of several hostile towns which had served as bases for Arab irregular units.

Erakat opines that Israel “continues to steal Palestinian land for illegal settlements, destroying homes and evicting families”. Let Erakat offer indisputable proof.

Historians have painted the following picture: Mark Twain, in 1867, said of the Yezreel Valley: “There is not a solitary village, not for 30 miles in either direction.

“One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. We reached Tabor safely… we never saw a human being on the whole route.” Other travellers gave similar accounts of Palestine prior to the arrival of the Jews. But Erakat maintains that the Jews stole the land.

By the mid-1890s Jews were an important part of the ethnic and religious mix of Palestine in the area eventually partitioned by the UN for a Jewish state. At the time there was a

clear Jewish majority in that area.