Hamas leader says 'we have the Israelis right where we want them' in leaked messages, WSJ reports

[AloeVera]

13. Not so. They were expelled and "cleansed" or fled.

Largely due to violence/massacres, psychological warfare and collapse ofctheir society following attacks on their towns and villages by Zionist and then Israeli forces.

In the 1948 Palestine war more than 700000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of Mandatory Palestine's Arab population – were expelled or fled from their homes, at first by Zionist paramilitaries,[a] and after the establishment of Israel, by its military.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] The expulsion and flight was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession, and displacement of Palestinian society, known as the Nakba.[10][11][12] Dozens of massacres targeting Arabs were conducted by Israeli military forces and between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Village wells were poisoned in a biological warfare programme and properties were looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning.[13][14] Other sites were subject to Hebraization of Palestinian place names.[15]

The precise number of Palestinian refugees, many of whom settled in Palestinian refugee camps in neighboring states, is a matter of dispute.[16] Around 80 percent of the Arab inhabitants of what became Israel (half of the Arab total population of Mandatory Palestine) left or were expelled from their homes.[17][18] About 250000–300000 Palestinians fled or were expelled during the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, before the termination of the British Mandate on May 14 1948. The desire to prevent the collapse of the Palestinians and to avoid more refugees were some of the reasons for the entry of the Arab League into the country, which began the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.[19][20]

The causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus are also a subject of fundamental disagreement among historians. Factors involved in the exodus include Jewish military advances, destruction of Arab villages, psychological warfare, fears of another massacre by Zionist militias after the Deir Yassin massacre,[21]: 239–240  which caused many to leave out of panic, direct expulsion orders by Israeli authorities, the demoralizing impact of wealthier classes fleeing,[22] the typhoid epidemic in some areas caused by Israeli well-poisoning,[23] collapse in Palestinian leadership and Arab evacuation orders,[24][25] and a disinclination to live under Jewish control.[26][27]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight

Lots more interesting stuff.

Avi Shlaim is the most "mainstream" of the New Historians, for those who want to delve into the perspective from the "other side" as presented by an Israeli historian.

The denial of the events of the Nakba is largely why the conflict has metastized in the region imo.