Having fled Palestine in 1948 with his pregnant wife, the Lebanese Wedad (Salameh) Abou Fadel, whom he married in 1946, was granted the Lebanese passport on account of his Lebanese Beirut-born mother. One of the outcomes of the Israeli-Arab war in Palestine in 1948, and the concomitant flight of huge numbers of Palestinians, was that Haifa lost its status as the commercial centre of the Mashriq or Arab countries east of Egypt, and the role was picked up by Beirut. Lebanese traders were happy to lay out the red carpet for people they otherwise regarded as "two -bit Palestinians" for the capital and talent that could bring to the local economy.