Arab villages which resisted IDF attacks soon depleted their meager ammunition - usually within a few hours. In some villages, for instance, al-Ghabsiyeh, the IDF directly fired on fleeing villagers. Palestinian casualties were high and medical resources in such circumstances were virtually non-existent. After occupying a village, IDF sappers would often blow up its houses. (Rosemary Sayig, Palstinian: From Peasant to Revolutinaries, p.38) In al-Zib, for example, the remaining villagers "said that the Jewish soldiers had destroyed most of the al-Ramel area south of the village, and the eastern section." (Nazzal Nafz, “The Zionist Ocupation of Western Galilee, 1948, p.48, see also about the same subject, how soldiers destroyed the village of Biram on Elias Chacour, Boold Brothers, 1984, pp. 80f) Thus the IDF continued Palmach policies.

Sometimes, after a village fell, some people tried to remain. Consequences varied. The villagers of Mi'ilya were permitted to return after they had fled; this was a rare case. Sometimes the elderly were allowed to remain or were removed to other villages. However, arrest, imprisonment, deportation or being killed were the lot of most individuals who attempted to stay or were caught trying to return to their homes. For example, in al-Bi'na, al Bassa, Kabri, Mejd al Kroon and Safsaf, mass killings were used to frighten everyone into fleeing. Mass deportation was common (Sayigh, p.84). After the war ended, only one of fifteen non Bedouin Arabs (60,000) remained in Israeli controlled territory.

As to whether Arabs left voluntarily or not, Nathan Chofshi, a Russian Jew who moved to Palestine in 1908, and who witnessed the Arabs' departure, wrote:
We Jews forced the Arabs to leave....Here was a people who lived on its own land for 1,300 years. We came and turned the native Arabs into tragic refugees. And still we dare to slander and malign them, to besmirch their name. Instead of being deeply ashamed of what we did and of trying to undo some of the evil we committed by helping these unfortunate refugees, we justify our terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them. (Nathan Chofshi, in Jewish Newsletter, 2.9.1959)
Erich Fromm, a Jewish author, wrote:
It is often said that the Arabs fled, that they left the country voluntarily, and that they therefore bear the responsibility for losing their property and their land. It is true that in history there are some instances - in Rome and in France during the Revolutions when enemies of the state were proscribed and their property confiscated. But in general international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses his property or his rights of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legiti-macy than the Jews. Just because the Arabs fled? Since when is that punishable by confiscation of property and by being barred from returning to the land on which a people's forefathers have lived for generations? Thus, the claim of the Jews to the land of Israel cannot be a realistic political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse. (Erick Fromm, in Jewish Newsletter, 5.19.1958)
Erich Fromm added: "there is only one solution for Israel, namely, the unilateral acknowledgement of the obligation of the state toward the Arabs - not to use it as a bargaining point, but to acknowledge the complete moral obligation of the Israeli state to its former inhabitants of Palestine..(same sources)

In its October 2, 1948, issue, the Economist urged sending humanitarian aid to the refugees. It did not ask for an inquiry into the causes of their exodus. Sayigh maintains that this became the principal Western response to the problem: give material aid to the refugees but ignore the political causes.(Sayigh, p.82)

In that same article the Economist estimated that there were 360,000 refugees, but Sayigh contends that there were at least twice that many. She estimates that this was the approximate redistribution of Palestinian Arabs during 1948 and early 1949 (Sayigh, p.65)