8 introduction December 1947 and accelerated in the two months between March 10, 1948 and May 15, when the British authorities left Palestine. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, mostly villagers, were uprooted during this time, and severe military offensives by the Zionist forces were reported to have been conducted (Pappé 2006, 40).12 Although there were around one million Palestinian-Arabs living in Mandate Palestine in early December 1947, the mass displacement and series of systematic exclusions, ethnic cleansing and rampant massacres by the Zionist forces resulted in the creation of around 750,000 Palestinian refugees. And it is the descendants of these Palestinians that are today the largest and oldest refugee population in the world. During these ethnic cleansing campaigns, around 13,000 Palestinians were killed and around 418 villages were destroyed and depopulated, leaving a mere 156,000 Palestinians remaining (Khalidi 1992, xix, xxxi, 581).13 Those Arabs who stayed are today located in three main areas: Galilee in the north, the Triangle area (cluster of Arab villages along the Green Line) in the centre, and the Naqab in the south. Of the 156,000 Palestinians who remained in Israel after the 1948 war, approximately 30 percent forces already began in late 1947. In addition, as professor Neil Caplan explains, “Although some historians would cite 14 May, 1948 as the start of the war known variously as the Israeli War of Independence, an-Nakba (the [Palestinian] Catastrophe), or the first Palestine war, it would be more accurate to consider that war as beginning on 30 November, 1947, with the Arab attacks which followed the passage of the historic United Nations partition resolution of 29 November.” Thus, it is for reasons of practicality, that this book will refer to the civil war and military and ethnic cleansing operations that took place between late 1947 to January 1949 by its popular title, the ‘1948 war’ (see Pappé 2006, 55–60; Caplan 1997, 17). 12 Here Pappé also explains that “… Arab intervention only materialized on 15 May, 1948, five and a half months after the UN partition resolution had been adopted. During that long period most of the Palestinians – apart from a few enclaves where paramilitary groups were trying to organize some sort of resistance – remained defenceless in the face of Jewish [Zionist] operations already underway” (ibid., 47). Also important to note here is that, though not on the same scale as that of the Palestinian-Arab population, the deaths and targeting of unarmed civilians during the 1948 war also included Jews in Palestine and in neighbouring Arab countries. One major massacre of Jewish civilians in Palestine during this occurred on December 31, 1947 at the Haifa Oil Refinery where 39 Jews were killed by Arab workers after the Zionist paramilitary group Irgun had thrown a bomb into a crowd of Arabs, killing 6 and wounding 42; another occurred on May 13, 1948 with a massacre in the Jewish settlement of Kfar Etzion where around 130 surrendering individuals were killed by Arab fighters, among others. This second major massacre of unarmed Jewish civilians was a response to the well-publicized brutal massacre of Palestinians in Dir Yassin which took place on April 8, 1948, and is further detailed in Chapter Four of this book (see also Morris 1999, 195–205; Benvenisti 2000, 116). 13 Of the 418 villages reported by Khalidi, 292 villages were totally destroyed, 90 villages were largely destroyed with a small percentage of houses left standing, 8 villages had some houses destroyed, and 7 villages survived but were overrun by Jewish settlers.