The precise number of refugees, many of whom settled in refugee camps in neighboring states, is a matter of dispute but around 80 percent of the Arab inhabitants of what became Israel (half of the Arab total of Mandatory Palestine) left or were expelled from their homes. About 250,000–300,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled during the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, before the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948, a fact which was named as a "casus belli" for the entry of the Arab League into the country, sparking the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.