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Plan Dalet, Tochnit Dalet, was the Haganah's master plan for the war, finalised on 10 March 1948, two months before the state was declared. It set out how the brigades were to secure the territory allotted to the Jewish state and the areas beyond it, and in doing so it addressed the Arab villages directly.

The text gave commanders the authority to carry out operations against villages, including "destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris)" and, where villages resisted, "the destruction of the armed force and expulsion of the population outside the borders of the state". Its authors described it as defensive. Its effect, from April 1948, was the emptying of the countryside along the coast, in the Galilee and around Jerusalem.

Historians still argue over whether Plan Dalet was a blueprint for expulsion or a military plan that produced one. The villages did not survive the distinction.