原稿用紙400枚相当（分割掲載の予定であったが編集委員会のご厚意により一括掲載となる）。This paper gives an intoroduction to The Proceedings of the Provisional Government Meetings Vols.2-3 (1 to 16 June 1948) and gives a review of its main contents, the Arab question. As a follow-up to my previous papers published in this journal in March 2014 and March 2015, it is also intended to be an preliminary step toward revisiting the formative years of Israel, this time focusing on the first half of June 1948. A close examination of the proceedings brings us to the following two main conclusions. First, as far as these two weeks are concerned, any answer to the question of whether an "expusion policy" existed belongs to a grey zone due to the fact that numerous parts of the proceedings were censored. Second, the cabinet meeting on 16 June 1948 was a turning point not in policies, as the traditional wisdom suggests, but in political thinking.
As to the policies, the consensus crystallized on 16 June was virtually a logical extension of previous cabinet meetings. However, what Shertok, Ben-Gurion, and Zisling said respectively in their lengthy speeches about the justification for blocking the return of refugees did, in fact, become the official view of history adopted by Israeli governments, right or left, for more than half a century when denying refugees' right of return. At the same time, the concept of a "civil state," which was still a viable option for the provisional government until the end of May 1948, waned and collapsed, while territorial "Judaization" rapidly became a top political priority during the First Truce.The cabinet meeting on 16 June 1948 was crucial, in retrospect, in that it became the watershed of Israeli national political thinking by precipitating the eventual crystallization of nationally-held historical views concerning the justification for Palestinians' loss of homeland.
