On the 14th of May, 1948, the British left the land and the borders were established, and immediately the Arabs attacked the Jews land. The Arab Armies lost, and with that also lost a lot of there land. Due to this, a lot of Arabs were now living in Jewish land, and so fled to refugees in Arab countries. A total of 726,000 Arabs fled the land, and Jewish settlers took their land, making it difficult for the Arab refugees to go home. The problem also increased when the ‘Law of return’ and the ‘Nationality act’ became effective in Israel. These laws both generally controlled immigration for Israel. The Law of Return said that any Jew could immigrate to Israel, as long as they were not against the Jewish nation or have a contagious disease or be threatening to the state security. The Nationality Act said that Arabs could only immigrate to Israel if that Arab was born in Israel, had lived there for three out of five years prior the application for citizenship, he had settled or wants to settle permanently in Israel, and knew how to speak Hebrew. We can see the difference between how easy it is to immigrate as a Jew, and how hard it is to immigrate as an Arab. Due to this we can see the refugees are not going to easily make it back home. The refugee crisis is still present today. Both sides have a very different version of the cause of the refugee crisis, but both of them also believe strongly that it is the oppositions’ fault for the problem, and so neither will take responsibility.
The Palestinian version of the cause is that many vigilante-like groups of Jews came to various Palestinian villages and brutally killed men, women and children, and also mutilating them. The most well known and proclaimed horrific incident of this is on the 9th of April, 1948, when 3 well known Jewish gangs (one led by Menachem Begin, the stern gang led by Yitzhak Shamir, and the mainstream Haganah) attacked the village of Deir Yassin, and killed 154 men, women and children, and also mutilating some of the bodies. The Palestinian claim is that the Jewish gangs aim was to scare the Palestinians to flee to refugee camps, and so they succeeded, making it the Jews fault.
The Jews version of the cause is that the Arab armies invaded Israel, and that the Jews were in a peaceful state at the time. According to the Jewish claim, the Arab armies made the Palestinians move to refugee camps so as to make invading Israel easier. The land was abandoned, and so the Israel armies won and claimed the land. Due to this, the Arabs potentially relinquished the land, and so therefore the Israeli people have a right to it, making the refugee crisis the Palestinians fault.
In 1967, another war broke out between Israel and Arabs, and the Israeli people won again, and so took over the refugee camps. This meant that many people who fled from Israel in 1948 would now be under Jewish rule. We can see that this would make the refugee problem worse, for now the refugees have no freedom at all, and would have to do as the Jews say. We can easily see that due to many wars, the forcing out of Palestinians, and the capture and bad conditions of refugees, the Arabs and the Israelis were not going to live in peace together.
