[Restorer]

If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations.

Mighty big if. It is highly doubtful that the state of Israel at the time had the military capability to accomplish this. They probably could have run the Arabs out of Gaza, but they had real problems with the Jordanian Army. I don't think "cleansing" the West Bank was a militarily achievable option.

[Akira]

I agree. Jordan had plans to annex the West Bank in 1948 and to cleanse this area would have been nearly impossible. In reading Ben-Gurion's statements from the time, he would have loved to do that but was quite happy with the small state they had finally achieved after so much struggle.

What is so often lost in this debate is how the bordering Arab nations have never been a friend to the Palestinians.