When political Zionism began in late 19th century, only about 15,000 to 17,000 Jews lived in Palestine. In 1893 Arabs were roughly 95 percent of population. They had been in continuous possession of this territory for 1,300 years. The old Zionist saying that Palestine was "a land without people for a people without a land" was dead wrong.

In 1948 when Israel was founded, its 650,000 Jews were only about 35 percent of Palestine population. They owned only 7 percent of the land. So Zionist leaders knew they could not create a Jewish state with such a large Arab majority. Expulsion was talked about since the earliest days of the movement.

Ben-Gurion wrote in 1941 that "it is impossible to imagine general evacuation [of the Arab population] without compulsion, and brutal compulsion." In 1937 he told his son "Erect a Jewish State at once, even if it is not in the whole land. The rest will come in the course of time. It must come."

Benny Morris said it plainly: "Of course, Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst... Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here."

The opportunity came in 1948. Jewish forces drove up to 700,000 Palestinians into exile. Israelis long claimed Arabs fled because their leaders told them to. Scholars have demolished this myth. Most Arab leaders urged Palestinians to stay. Fear of violent death at hands of Zionist forces led most of them to flee.

After the war Israel barred the return of Palestinian exiles. Ben-Gurion said in June 1948 "We must prevent at all costs their return." By 1962 Israel owned almost 93 percent of land inside its borders. To achieve this, 531 Arab villages were destroyed and eleven urban neighborhoods emptied of their inhabitants.

Former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan said: "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages... the Arab villages are not there either... There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."

Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann of World Jewish Congress in 1956: "If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country... They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?"

Source: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy