By the early 1950s, the Zionist Organization's objectives were largely accomplished. It had taken territory in Palestine, occupying nearly 80 percent of it. Only the Gaza Strip and a sector of east central Palestine remained out of the control of the newly declared state. The Gaza Strip was being held by Egypt. East Central Palestine, now denominated the West Bank of the Jordan River, was being held by Jordan. So with those two exceptions, the aims of the Biltmore program of 1942 were accomplished. The armistice agreements that Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria had been forced to conclude with Israel in 1949 were holding. Under each armistice agreement, a mixed commission, made up of representatives of each pair of states, policed the armistice line. Each mixed commission was chaired by an official appointed by the United Nations. Israel still held the seat it had won in the United Nations, without keeping the commitments it made to gain admission. It continued successfully to resist pressure to repatriate the displaced Arabs. It was consolidating its hold on Jerusalem.

A persistent problem remained for Israel, however. The displaced Palestine Arabs were sheltering in the neighboring Arab states, in many instances just across the armistice line from Israeli-held territory. Palestine Arabs who had fled north languished in Lebanon or Syria. Those who had gone east were under Jordan – either in Jordan's earlier-held territory east of the Jordan River, or in the West Bank of the Jordan River. Those who had gone south were in the Gaza Strip. Not content with what was turning into a long-term exile, and seeing that the United Nations was taking no decisive action, Arab refugees sought ways to get back to Palestine on their own.

Some Palestine Arabs hazarded individual ventures back into their home areas, clandestinely crossing into what was now Israel. Some went to collect belongings. Some went to harvest crops they had planted. Since cultivable land was scarce, the pattern of agriculture in Palestine typically involved a village in which the inhabitants lived in proximity to one another, built on less desirable land. The fields would be outside the village, on the better land. In some instances, particularly with Jordan, the armistice line separated farmers from their fields, hence the frequency of line-crossing in the early years after 1949.