Nuggets from "Judgment Day: Islam, Israel, and the Nations" by Dave Hunt

War is cruel and costly in every way. The five full-scale wars that Israel has been forced to fight during its brief modern existence were not of her choosing. She didn’t start any of them but has had to finish them, defending herself against an enemy determined to destroy her. In the 1948 War of Independence, instead of Arabs driving the Jews in to the Mediterranean as they had sworn they would, about five hundred thousand Arab civilians fled the war zone. From that time to the present, they and their descendants, whose numbers have multiplied into the millions, have been classified by the world as “Palestinian refugees.”

The most tragic part about these abused and misused people is that most of them didn’t need to flee. Such a necessity (though imaginary) was a direct result of the Arab nations’ refusal to accept the UN partition plan. As already noted, the Arabs now want to go back to the borders set by UN Resolution 181. Israel, however, considers that resolution to be null and void because the Arabs sternly rejected it and attacked Israel in an attempt to exterminate her at that time. Furthermore, the Israelis tried to persuade them all to remain to build a new country together. Israel’s Proclamation of Independence, issued on May 14, 1948, had offered:

        “We yet call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, on the basis of full and equal citizenship…. We extend our hand in peace and neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples….”