Reply #14: I suppose that could be one version

[azurnoir]

a very self serving one for defenders of Israel it is further discussed here but keep in mind if the Palestinian had remained in place the permanent Jewish majority would have been much more difficult to achieve and maintain

Historians have argued over the causes of the Palestinian exodus. In early decades following the exodus, two diametrically opposed schools of analysis could be distinguished. The "Israeli Government claimed that the Palestinian Arabs left because they were ordered to and were deliberately incited into panic by their own leaders, who wanted the field cleared for the 1948 war", while "The Palestinian Arabs charge that their people were evicted at bayonet-point and by panic deliberately incited by the Zionists".<12> From the 1960s Walid Khalidi<13><14> and others have maintained that the expulsion of the Palestinians was a deliberate policy.<15>

With the opening-up of archival sources in the West and Israel, particularly the opening of the Protocols of Israel's cabinet meetings and the declassification of the Haganah Archive in Tel Aviv along with the IDF and Israeli Defence Ministry Archive in Givatayim,<16> a greater insight has been gained into the events leading up to the creation of Israel and the events surrounding its birth, in particular with the publication of the study by Benny Morris: The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem.

"New Historians" have presented a viewpoint suggesting around half of the Palestinians of the exodus were purposely expelled by Israeli army, though this was not an organized policy.<17><18> However, Walid Khalidi and other Palestinian historians, supported by Ilan Pappe, defend the thesis that the expulsions formed part of a deliberate plan.<19>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_exodus