page_title: 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine
section_title: Main wave of the Palestinian Arab exodus
hierarchical_section_title: 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine / Haganah offensive (1 April – 15 May 1948) / Main wave of the Palestinian Arab exodus
caption_attribution_description: English: Palestine refugees (British Mandate of Palestine - 1948). "Making their way from Galilee in October-November 1948" العربية: لاجئون فلسطينيون (كانوا يعيشون تحت الانتداب البريطاني على فلسطين) يشقون طريقهم من الجليل في تشرين الأول وتشرين الثاني (أكتوبر - نوفمبر) من عام 1948.
context_page_description: The 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine was the first phase of the 1948 Palestine war. It broke out after the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption of the Partition Plan for Palestine.
  During the civil war, the Jewish and Arab communities of Palestine clashed while the British, who had the obligation to maintain order, organized their withdrawal and intervened only on an occasional basis.
  When the British Mandate of Palestine expired on 14 May 1948, and with the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, the surrounding Arab states—Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq and Syria—invaded what had just ceased to be Mandatory Palestine, and immediately attacked Israeli forces and several Jewish settlements. The conflict thus escalated and became the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
context_section_description: Haganah's move to offensive operations during the second phase of the war was accompanied by a huge exodus that involved 350,000 Arab refugees, adding to the 100,000 displaced during the First wave. The term 'Palestinian exodus' is often used to refer to both these and two subsequent waves. These two waves gained a considerable amount of press interest and were widely relayed in the press of the time, more so than most other Palestine-related events.
  The causes of and responsibility for this exodus are highly controversial topics among commentators on the conflict and even historians who specialize in this era. Among the various possible causes, Efraim Karsh attributes the exodus mainly to Arab authorities' instructions to escape, whereas others argue that a policy of expulsion had been organized by the Yishuv authorities and implemented by Haganah. Others yet reject these two assumptions and see the exodus as the cumulative effect of all the civil war's consequences.
caption: Palestinian Arab refugees in 1948
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