Hi there,

This was something I explored extensively here, in a previous thread. It's an old thread, but I still think it rings true.

Some basic responses, though:

Between 250,000 and 300,000 Palestinians left or were expelled from Israel/Palestine before/during/after the 1948 Arab Israeli war

This is incorrect. The number was likely closer to 700,000 total, with around 250,000-300,000 of them being expelled (though perhaps less, depending on who you ask; Benny Morris's estimates suggest closer to 225,000 at the most). There were around 800,000 (or up to a million) Jews who ended up leaving Arab countries before/during/after this war. I'm not familiar with anything that suggests 250,000-300,000 Palestinians left, and the Israeli government's estimates on its own were of at least 500,000, if memory serves.

Now, whether that meets the definition of "ethnic cleansing" is actually a lot more complicated than one might think. The reason being, as I think I've explained elsewhere in this sub before, ethnic cleansing is both a politically charged and definitionally dubious term. There's no international law that clearly defines ethnic cleansing, and there certainly wasn't one back in 1948. So it's hard to retroactively apply terms. Nevertheless, if one defines ethnic cleansing solely as "forcible deportation of civilians", then yes, ethnic cleansing occurred on all sides of the war. However, if one adds in another component, which is the requirement that the main motivation be ethnicity, one runs into a problem: the motivations of these actions for both sides were more varied than ethnicity alone, and included things like legitimate security concerns where civilians had been aiding and participating in the war effort and would be left behind enemy lines. These types of questions have been litigated before, and are more complex than one might think. And when one considers another possible wrinkle, which is the meaning of the word "systematically", it gets even more difficult, as Israeli commanders acted essentially on their own for example and without any real central directive to expel Palestinian Arabs in particular. This is why Israel's population distribution of Palestinian Arabs after the war was lopsided; the south and north were handled differently, for example.

I always try to veer away from using politically charged terms that have developed recently and applying them to historical events that predate said terms for that reason. I think there's an argument to be made both ways on the issue, and it's an interesting one, but of little value to ponder too deeply.