Ilan Pappe (an Israeli historian) in his book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine [xxxiv] was very clear on how Palestinians were expelled from Palestine (my family was one of them), where he said,
“The ‘Red House’ was a typical early Tel-Avivian building.”(xi)
“In this building on a cold Wednesday afternoon, 10 March 1848, a group of eleven men, veteran Zionist leaders together with young military Jewish officers, put the final touches to a plan for ethnic cleansing of Palestine. That same evening, military orders were dispatched to the units on the ground to prepare for the systematic expulsion of the Palestinians from vast areas of the country. The orders came with a detailed description of the methods to be employed to forcibly evict the people: Large-scale intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centers; setting fire to homes, properties and goods, expulsion, demolition and, finally, planting mines among the rubble to prevent any of the expelled inhabitants from returning. Each unit was issued with its own list of villages and neighbourhoods as the target of this master plan.” (xii) “Once the decision was taken, it took six months to complete the mission. When it was over, more than half of Palestine’s native population, close to 800,000 people, had been uprooted, 531 villages had been destroyed, and eleven urban neighbourhoods emptied of their inhabitants. The plan was decided upon 10 March 1948. Above all, its systematic implementation in the following months was a clear-cut ethnic cleansing operation, regarded under international law today as a crime against humanity.”(xiii)
50% of all Palestinian villages were destroyed in 1948 and many cities were cleared of their Palestinian population, including Akka, Bir Al-Saba’, Bisan, Lod, Al-Majdal, Nazareth, Haifa, Tabaria, Yaffa, West-Jerusalem, etc.
The tragedy of the refugees continued in 1967. That year, “Israel” occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and many Palestinians were uprooted for the second time. The refugees found shelter in surrounding countries like Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. severance, we can overcome them and achieve greatness.
Ref: Abandoned Palestine Refugee