in Sofar, Lebanon, recommended that the Arab states "open the doors to ... women and children and old people if events in Palestine make it necessary, but that the AHC vigorously opposed the departure of Palestinians and even the granting of visas to women and children. Christopher Hitchens also expressed doubt as to the validity of claims of orders to leave from the Higher Arab Executive. Relative importance of Arab evacuation orders Morris estimates that Arab orders accounts for at most 5% of the total exodus: Arab officers ordered the complete evacuation of specific villages in certain areas, lest their inhabitants "treacherously" acquiesce in Israeli rule or hamper Arab military deployments.... There can be no exaggerating the importance of these early Arab-initiated evacuations in the demoralization, and eventual exodus, of the remaining rural and urban populations. Based on his studies of seventy-three Israeli and foreign archives or other sources, Morris made a judgement as to the main causes for the Arab exodus from each of the 392 settlements that were depopulated during the 1948-1950 conflict (pages xiv to xviii). His tabulation lists "Arab orders" as being a significant "exodus factor" in only 6 of these settlements. Furthermore, in his comprehensive book on the Arab–Israeli conflict, Righteous Victims, Morris wrote: In some areas Arab commanders ordered the villagers to evacuate to clear the ground for military purposes or to prevent surrender. More than half a dozen villages ... were abandoned during these months as a result of such orders. Elsewhere, in East Jerusalem and in many villages around the country, the [Arab] commanders ordered women, old people, and children to be sent away to be out of harm's way.... [T]he AHC and the Arab League had periodically endorsed such a move when contemplating the future war in Palestine. In a 2003 interview with Haaretz, Morris summed up the conclusions of his revised edition of The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem: "In the months of April–May 1948, units of the Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves. At the same time, it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages." The Arab National Committee in Jerusalem, following the 8 March 1948 instructions of