298 • 17 ISRAEL'S REBIRTH AND THE RISE OF ARAB NATIONALISMregion, where Egypt set up an "all-Palestine government" under the former
mufti. This political ploy against Abdallah foundered, leaving the Gaza
Strip under Egypt's military administration, which did the local Palestini¬
ans no good at all.
The Palestinian refugees suffered the most. They numbered at the end of
1948 somewhere around 750,000. Some had voluntarily left their homes
even before the struggle started, while most were forced to flee during the
fighting. Who forced their flight? Israel's supporters claim that Arab gov¬
ernments broadcast orders to Palestinian civilians to get out so that their
armies could more easily move in against the Israelis. No evidence docu¬
ments this claim. Israeli scholars have shown recently that Zionist military
units terrorized the Palestinians up to 14 May 1948 and that the IDF drove
out others during the later phases of the war. This debate is likely to go on.
Both sides committed terrorist acts. Conditions varied from time to time
and from place to place, but most Palestinians ended up in camps near Is¬
rael's borders in the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip, the Jordanian-ruled West
Bank, Syria, or Lebanon. There was no state for the Palestinians.
The Arab countries (except for Jordan) would not absorb them, mainly
for political reasons, but some would also have found it economically hard
to do so. The Palestinians themselves rejected assimilation because they
wanted to go back to their homes. Israel, busy absorbing European Jewish
survivors and unwilling to take in a "fifth column" of implacable foes,
would not readmit the Palestinian refugees. The United Nations, realizing
that something had to be done for these unfortunate people, set up the UN
Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as a stopgap measure. But all it could
do in 1949 was to house them in camps, give them enough food and cloth¬
ing to survive, and educate or train their children, hoping that the problem
would, someday and somehow, be solved. A few refugees did manage to go
back to Israel, and many younger Palestinians gradually became absorbed
in the economies of the Arab countries; but many others stayed in the
camps, growing ever more bitter against Israel, its Western backers, and
the Arab leaders who had betrayed them. We will have more to say about
the Palestinians later.
THE ARAB COUNTRIESLet us look at the Arab world in the wake of what was soon termed the
"Palestine disaster." We will also review the mandate era between the two
world wars. If the details seem confusing at times, keep in mind that, no
matter what claims to unity may have been made by Arab nationalists,