Israel-Palestine Mega Fact Check!

The Arab nations did lose the war, but did not start it. Jewish militias—armed with tanks, mortars, machine guns, bulldozers, war planes, and warships—started invading the land they would take for the future state of Israel in February 1948, but the neighboring Arab armies only invaded Israel on May 16 1948 (the day after the British Mandate ended).

According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe: “As the end of the Mandate approached, the British forces withdrew into the port of Haifa. Any territory they left, the military forces of the Jewish community took over, clearing out the local population even before the end of the Mandate. The process began in February 1948 with a few villages, and culminated in April with the cleansing of Haifa, Jaffa, Safad, Beisan, Acre, and Western Jerusalem. These last stages had already been systematically planned under the master plan, Plan D [also known as Plan Dalet], prepared alongside the high command of the Haganah, the main military wing of the Jewish community. The plan included the following clear reference to the methods to be employed in the process of cleansing the population:

Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously … Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.[5. 27]”

Source: Ten Myths about Israel (2017) by Ilan Pappe, pp.62-63.