Approximately 720,000 Arabs, encouraged by their leaders to leave, fled from Israel between April and December1948. The Arab leaders promised them that they would soon be able to return following Israel's destruction. In some cases Jews, including Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, urged the Arabs to remain, promising that they would not be harmed. However, even though government never passed or even proposed a law against Arabs not suspected of terrorism (those who were considered terrorists were deported from Israel. Often their families moved with them), some Jewish individuals had "bad blood" against the Arabs because of the then-just-ended war. Arabs also didn't want to live under Jewish government, and hoping for quick destruction of Israel, many left hoping to return soon. But Israel survived the continuous notorious attacks of the Arab countries and there are now 2 generations of Israeli Arabs who were born outside of Israel.
Those who left Israel hoped to be treated like brothers in other Arab countries, but they found themselves in squali refugee camps, often used by their new countries as pawns in a fight against Israel.
2. Jewish refugees from Arabic countries
In 1945 there were more than 870,000 Jews living in the various Arab states. Many of them had ancestors in the Arabic states since before the common era. These Jews were persecuted both by individuals and Arabic governments. Their property and belongings were confiscated in 1947 and 1948. There were anti-Jewish riots in Aden, Egypt, Lybia, Syria, and Iraq. In Iraq, Zionism was made a capital crime, and this law was used to kill Jews indiscriminately. The Jordanian government expelled all Jews from the Jordanian-occupied part of Jerusalem. Approximately 600,000 Jews (about 70% of the Jewish population in Arabic countries) sought refuge in the State of Israel, while many others emigrated to Europe, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and the United States. Those who emigrated to Israel were given Israeli citizenship and were absorbed into the society and became an integral part of the state. The Jewish refugees became full Israeli citizens while the Arab refugees remained "refugees" according to the wishes of the Arab leaders.
3. United Nations supports the Arabs
Although the number of refugees was about equal on both the Jewish and the Arabic sides, the UN only passed a resolution condemning Israel, which raised questions about UN's objectivity. Israel felt that the world is too dependent on Arabs for oil for UN to ever criticize them. Furthermore, there were other reasons for some countries. Communist countries--USSR, China, Cuba, Poland, and the rest of the Eastern Europe--all but legalized discrimination against Jews in their countries, so they could never support Israel (for example, Jews are not allowed to play professional sports. There is also a limited number of Jews excepted to college). The Muslim countries supported the Arabs because of the religion. Germany, France, Spain, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Austria, etc. have all engaged in mass-murder of Jews at one time or the other, so it would be ludicrous to expect them to be fair. It should be noted that during the 20 century, 75%-80% of the Jewish population in Europe was murdered by non-Arabic members of UN, which raises an eyebrow about UN's objectivity, even though most of the countries who are members of the UN were not directly involved in war in Israel. So it's understandable why Israel always opposed UN intervention in the conflict.
