their children? Will this stand up to moral scrutiny? We shoot at those from among the 200,000 hungry [Palestinian] Arabs who cross the line [to graze their flocks]—will this stand up to moral review? Arabs cross to collect the grain that they left in the abandoned villages and we set mines for them and they go back without an arm or a leg... [It may be that this] cannot pass review, but I know of no other method of guarding the borders.”78 Moshe Dayan, Israeli military leader and politician, Defense Minister of Israel 1967-1974 Israeli laws denying Palestinian return The 1954 Law for the Prevention of Infiltration In 1948, Israel not only denied the return of Palestinian refugees by destroying their villages and policing the border, it enacted the Prevention of Infiltration Military Order, which later became a law in 1954. This law was, and continues to be, one of the main tools preventing the right of return of Palestinian refugees. It defines Palestinian refugees who fled to neighboring countries as “infiltrators.” This law deems, inter alia, the following persons to be infiltrators: nationals and citizens of nearby Arab countries; residents or visitors of those countries or the parts of Palestine outside Israel; and Palestinians without nationality or citizenship—or doubtful status—who moved out of what is now Israel. Following the Nakba, under the military order, Israeli police carried out raids on Palestinian villages searching for refugees who had returned to their homes or lands. Any returnees caught were subsequently transported to the border and expelled.79 In January 1949, for example, refugees from the Palestinian towns and villages of Shafa Amr, Mi’ilya and Tarshiha who tried to return home were met with hostility as Israeli forces detained them, confiscated their belongings, and forcibly deported them to Jordan.80 “‎ On 25 October 1948, after the establishment of Israel, the village of Zakariyya was attacked ‎and its inhabitants were expelled. After a few weeks, things calmed down and some villagers returned to the village. After ‎about two months of displacement, my family managed to sneak back into Zakariyya. 78 Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: a History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), 275. 79 Benny Morris, supra note 30, 152 and 39. 80 State Archives, Foreign Ministry, Arab Refugees 2444/19; and in Segev, The First Israelis, supra note 23. 28