Jerusalem- Speaking to a packed audience of Israeli-Arabs Friday in the Galilee town of Kfar Kana, Sheikh Raed Salah promised his listeners that Israel would soon experience a massive influx of the descendants of Arabs who fled during the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel.

"There is no escape but to return to our land, our country, our villages and our towns," proclaimed the controversial leader of Israel's Northern Islamic Movement, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. "The right of return has no alternative. We shall not repeat the mistake made in 1948 and shall not agree to take money in return or become citizens of other countries."

The gathering was held to commemorate what is known in Arabic as the "Nakba" or disaster, a day of mourning over the creation of the State of Israel.

Threats of violence

Salah, who has had multiple run-ins with Israeli law enforcement officials over charges of incitement and fundraising for terrorist groups, called the recent arrest of Israeli Arabs Omar Said and Ameer Makhoul an act of "revenge against political groups in our society."

Makhoul's job, he claimed, was to "reveal the crimes of the Israeli establishment." He was recently arrested on charges of espionage for allegedly acting as a spy for the Hezbollah terror organization.

The sheikh also issued a warning to Israeli Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch that the natural place of all who "incite" against the Arabs is "under our shoes."

"Mr. Aharonovitch and all those hiding behind you, don't put us in a corner," he warned, threatening violence, "because the more radical one among us will go mad. We will all rise and defend our present and our future and our children's."

Taking his cue from Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad, Salah called on Israeli-Arabs to boycott Israeli goods produced in the "cancer called communities inside the West Bank."

The Israeli-Arab leader also called for Hamas and Fatah to join together in opposition to Israel. "From here, from the Galilee, we call on you to unite against the occupation until the state of Palestine is established with Jerusalem as its capital," Salah urged.

Karsh: Arabs responsible for Nakba

While Israeli-Arabs condemn Israel for the plight of the Arab refugees, new scholarship calls the currently accepted historical narrative into question.

According to recent research by Efraim Karsh, revealed in his new book Palestine Betrayed, "None of the 170,000–180,000 Arabs fleeing urban centers, and only a handful of the 130,000–160,000 villagers who left their homes, had been forced out by Jews." Over half of the Arab 600,000 Arab refugees of 1948 left during the last month of the British mandate, before the establishment of the State of Israel, he explained.

According to Karsh, while some claim that Jewish factions expelled Arabs from the Galilee as well, it was only in Lod (Lydda) that Arabs were forcibly expelled by Israeli troops during the course of the fighting.

In opposition to what has become the accepted historical narrative, he declared that "it was the actions of the Arab leaders that condemned hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to exile."

Noted Arabist Daniel Pipes expanded on Karsh's thesis, noting that "Arab commanders ordered noncombatants out of the way of military maneuvers; or they threatened laggards with treatment as traitors if they stayed; or they demanded that villages be evacuated to improve their standing on the battlefield; or they promised a safe return in a matter of days."

However, "The Palestinian leadership disapproved of a population return, seeing this as implicitly recognizing the nascent State of Israel. The Israelis were at first ready to take back the evacuees but then hardened their position as the war progressed," Pipes wrote.

According to some estimates, the number of Jews expelled from Arab lands following the establishment of the State of Israel together with their descendants total close to two million.