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The truce conditions imposed by the Jews were summarized as follows:

• Surrender the weapons, military vehicles, and all instruments of war within no more than three hours to the British Army under Haganah supervision, with the Army to hand them over to the Haganah before 15 May 1948.

• Surrender all foreign males for deportation under Haganah supervision within 24 hours.

• Surrender all prisoners held among the Arab ranks.

• Search the Arab homes for weapons. To enable this, a curfew would be declared for 24 hours.

• Anyone found thereafter with weapons in his possession would be tried.

• Remove the barricades erected on streets leading to the Arab neighborhoods.

But the Arabs in Haifa refused to sign these humiliating terms. The Arab delegation withdrew, the people dispersed, and the Jews resumed firing guns and bombs throughout the night. The next day, Friday, 23 April 1948, the Jews unleashed killing, plunder, and intensified brutal crimes in Haifa.

Haifa was surrounded from the sea and from the east and west by the British Army, which prevented Arabs, armed and unarmed alike, from entering Haifa, while helping them leave and opening the gates so that Haifa would be emptied of its Arab inhabitants and become Jewish.

The British Army had occupied the port area and declared its readiness to protect anyone who took refuge there. People crowded to reach it and save themselves and their children. British police began helping people transfer to boats moored in the port. Because of the crush, many fell into the water, and the boats departed from Haifa for Acre in a pitiful condition.

The residents were terrified by the planned brutal massacres committed by the armed Zionist gangs, such as the massacres of Deir Yassin, Nasr al-Din, Hawassa, Aylut, Sakrir, al-Dawayima, Balad al-Shaykh, and others. These violated every human feeling, every social custom, and international law. Some people began leaving their homes and dwellings for neighboring Arab countries,