Arab Literary Travels

Michael Espersen: Introduction

In 1948, over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs had fled or were expelled from their homes by the invading Israeli army. After the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, the vast majority of the refugees lived in poverty in camps in the surrounding Arab states. Many went to Egypt, Syria, or Lebanon, but the greatest share went to Jordan. Each refugee family had a specific village or town of origin, and every refugee shared the experience of having been separated from their homes. My final project will chronicle the events of July 1948, when the largest mass military expulsion of the 1948 war took place in the town of Lydda. Today, Lydda is an Israeli town called Lod, but before it was invaded by Israel in July 1948, it was an Arab town of over 50,000. According to Arab historians, over 49,000 of those residents were made to leave their homes by the army, leaving only very few of the original residents, in order to make room for new Israeli immigrants. 

In order to understand the Arab-Israeli wars, one must have a proper understanding of the war of 1948. For this task, one must acquaint themselves with the events of the war, including the mass expulsions of the Palestinians by Israel. The expulsion at Lydda was the single largest human catastrophe of the war, in which approximately 50,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes. This project tells their story, through the words of Arab and Israeli historians.

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