Causes of The 1948 Palestinian Exodus - Morris's Four Waves Analysis

Morris's Four Waves Analysis

In The Irish Times of February 2008, Benny Morris summarized his analysis as follows: "Most of Palestine's 700,000 "refugees" fled their homes because of the flail of war (and in the expectation that they would shortly return to their homes on the backs of victorious Arab invaders). But it is also true that there were several dozen sites, including Lydda and Ramla, from which Arab communities were expelled by Jewish troops." In The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Morris divided the Palestinian exodus in four waves and an aftermath: Morris analyses the direct causes, as opposed to his proposed indirect cause of the "transfer idea", for each wave separately.