Arab Evacuation Orders Morris estimates that Arab orders accounts for at most 5% of the total exodus:
Arab officers ordered the complete evacuation of specific villages in certain areas, lest their inhabitants "treacherously" acquiesce in Israeli rule or hamper Arab military deployments.... There can be no exaggerating the importance of these early Arab-initiated evacuations in the demoralization, and eventual exodus, of the remaining rural and urban populations.
[56]Furthermore, in his comprehensive book on the Arab–Israeli conflict,
Righteous Victims, Morris wrote:
In some areas Arab commanders ordered the villagers to evacuate to clear the ground for military purposes or to prevent surrender. More than half a dozen villages ... were abandoned during these months as a result of such orders. Elsewhere, in East Jerusalem and in many villages around the country, the [Arab] commanders ordered women, old people, and children to be sent away to be out of harm's way.... [T]he AHC and the Arab League had periodically endorsed such a move when contemplating the future war in Palestine.
[57]In a 2003 interview with
Haaretz, Morris summed up the conclusions of his revised edition of
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem: "In the months of April–May 1948, units of the
Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves. At the same time, it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the
Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages."
[58] The Arab National Committee in Jerusalem, following the 8 March 1948 instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, ordered women, children and the elderly in various parts of Jerusalem to leave their homes and move to areas "far away from the dangers. Any opposition to this order ... is an obstacle to the holy war ... and will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts."
[59] In a 1959 paper,
Walid Khalidi attributed the "Arab evacuation story" to
Joseph Schechtman, who wrote two 1949 pamphlets in which "the evacuation order first makes an elaborate appearance."
[60] Morris, too, did not find any blanket orders of evacuation.
[61]