Ben-Gurion to the Northern Command in Nazareth. There is no doubt in my mind that this order originated with Ben-Gurion. Just as the expulsion order for the city of Lod, which was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, was issued immediately after Ben-Gurion visited the headquarters of Operation Dani [July 1948]. Gelber also underlines that Palestinian Arabs had certainly in mind the opportunity they would have to return their home after the conflict and that this hope must have eased their flight: "When they ran away, the refugees were confident of their eventual repatriation at the end of hostilities. This term could mean a cease-fire, a truce, an armistice and, certainly, a peace agreement. The return of escapees had been customary in the Middle East's wars throughout the ages". Historian Christopher Sykes saw the causes of the Arab flight similar to Gelber: It can be said with a high degree of certainty that most of the time in the first half of 1948 the mass-exodus was the natural, thoughtless, pitiful movement of ignorant people who had been badly led and who in the day of trial found themselves forsaken by their leaders. Terror was the impulse, by hearsay most often, and sometimes through experience as in the Arab port of Jaffa which surrendered on the 12th of May and where the Irgunists, to quote Mr. John Marlowe, "embellished their Deir Yassin battle honours by an orgy of looting". But if the exodus was by and large an accident of war in the first stage, in the later stages it was consciously and mercilessly helped on by Jewish threats and aggression towards Arab populations. Karsh views the second stage as being "dictated predominantly by ad hoc military considerations (notably the need to deny strategic sites to the enemy if there were no available Jewish forces to hold them)". Palestinian Arab fears In a 1958 publication, Don Peretz rejected both the Israeli and Palestinian explanations of the exodus. Peretz suggested that the exodus could be attributed to "deeper social causes of upheaval within the Palestine Arab community" such as the breakdown of all governing structures. According to him, "The community became easy prey to rumor and exaggerated atrocity stories. The psychological preparation for mass flight was complete. The hysteria fed upon the growing number of Jewish military victories. With most Arab leaders then outside the country, British officials no longer in evidence, and the