 Now, what about the claim that the Palestinians were displaced, turned into refugees by the Israelis in the 1948 war? The large majority of Palestinians fled out of fear of the violence their own leaders were initiating. It was not necessarily the Jews they feared, but the conflict itself. In some cases, Palestinians left their home because of coercion by their own leadership. While Israel did occasionally drive out small numbers of Palestinians, this was due mainly to unplanned military considerations. Indeed, the dominant attitude among Palestinians at the time in the late 1940s, early 50s was that they had been victims of their own leadership who had deserted them and had promised them a quick return home rather than victims of Israeli hostility.