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The Nakba () is the ethnic cleansing
of Palestinians through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, property, and belongings, along with the destruction of their society and the suppression of their culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations. The term is used to describe the events of the 1948 Palestine war in Mandatory Palestine as well as Israel's Ongoing Nakba of Palestinians. As a whole, it covers the fracturing of Palestinian society and the longstanding rejection of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.; ;
During the foundational events of the Nakba in 1948, about half of Palestine's predominantly Arab populationaround 750,000 peoplewere expelled from their homes or made to flee through various violent means, at first by Zionist paramilitaries, and after the establishment of the State of Israel, by its military. targeted Palestinian Arabs, and over 500 Arab-majority towns, villages, and urban neighborhoods were depopulated. Many of the settlements were either completely destroyed or repopulated by Jews and given new Hebrew names. Israel employed biological warfare against Palestinians by poisoning village wells. By the end of the war, Israel controlled 78% of the land area of the former Mandatory Palestine.
The Palestinian national narrative views the Nakba as a collective trauma that defines Palestinians' national identity and political aspirations. The Israeli national narrative views the Nakba as a component of the War of Independence that established Israel's statehood and sovereignty. Israel negates or denies the atrocities it committed, claiming that many of the expelled Palestinians left willingly or that their expulsion was necessary and unavoidable. Nakba denial has been increasingly challenged since the 1970s in Israeli society, particularly by the New Historians, but the official narrative has not changed.Khalidi, Walid (1961)
Palestinians observe 15 May as Nakba Day, commemorating the war's events one day after Israel's Independence Day. In 1967, after the Six-Day War, another series of Palestinian exodus occurred; this came to be known as the Naksa (), and also has Naksa Day, 5 June. The Nakba has greatly influenced Palestinian culture and is a foundational symbol of Palestinian national identity, together with the political cartoon character Handala, the Palestinian keffiyeh, and the Palestinian key. Many books, songs, and poems have been written about the Nakba.
After the partition of the Ottoman Empire, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine began in 1922. By then, Jews had become about 10% of the population. Both the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate for Palestine called the 90% Arab population "existing non-Jewish communities".;
In February 1947, after World War II and the Holocaust, the British declared they would end the Mandate and submit Palestine's future to the newly created United Nations for resolution.;
The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was created, and in September, it submitted a report to the UN General Assembly recommending partition.;
Palestinians and most of the Arab League opposed the partition.;
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But see: Zionists accepted it, but planned to expand Israel's borders beyond what the UN allocated to it.;
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But see: In the autumn of 1947, Israel and Jordan, with British approval, secretly agreed to divide the land allocated to Palestine between them after the end of the British Mandate.;
On 29 November 1947, the General Assembly passed Resolution 181 (II), the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.;
At the time, Arabs made up about two-thirds of the population;
and owned about 90% of the land,;
while Jews made up between a quarter and a third of the population;
and owned about 7% of the land.;
The UN partition plan allocated to Israel about 55% of the land, where the population was about 500,000 Jews and 407,000–438,000 Arabs. Palestine was allocated the remaining 45% of the land, where the population was about 725,000–818,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews. Jerusalem and Bethlehem were to be an internationally governed corpus separatum with a population of about 100,000 Arabs and 100,000 Jews.;
The partition plan's detractors considered it pro-Zionist, with 56% of the land allocated to the Jewish state although the Palestinian Arab population was twice the Jewish population. The plan was celebrated by most Jews in Palestine, with Zionist leaders, in particular David Ben-Gurion, viewing it as a tactical step and a stepping stone to future territorial expansion over all of Palestine.Sean F. McMahon, The Discourse of Palestinian-Israeli Relations, Routledge 2010 p. 40. "The Zionist movement also accepted the UN partition plan of 1947 tactically. Palumbo notes that "the Zionists accepted this scheme the since they hoped to use their state as a base to conquer the whole country." Similarly, Flapan states that "Zionist acceptance of the resolution in no way diminished the belief of all the Zionist parties in their right to the whole of the country Palestine"; and that "acceptance of the UN Partition Resolution was an example of Zionist pragmatism par excellence. It was a tactical acceptance, a vital step in the right direction – a springboard for expansion when circumstances proved more judicious."Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, Pantheon, 1988, , Ch. 1 Myth One : Zionists Accepted the UN Partition and Planned for Peace, pages 13-53 "Every school child knows that there is no such thing in history as a final arrangementnot with regard to the regime, not with regard to borders, and not with regard to international agreements. History, like nature, is full of alterations and change. David Ben-Gurion, War Diaries, Dec. 3, 1947" The Arab Higher Committee, the Arab League, and other Arab leaders and governments rejected it on the basis that the Arabs not only formed a two-thirds majority but owned a majority of the land. They also indicated unwillingness to accept any form of territorial division, arguing that it violated the principles of national self-determination in the UN Charter that grant people the right to decide their own destiny.Sami Hadawi, Bitter Harvest: A Modern History of Palestine, Olive Branch Press, (1989) 1991 p. 76. They announced their intention to take all necessary measures to prevent the resolution's implementation.Live by the Sword: Israel's Struggle for Existence in the Holy Land, James Rothrock, p. 14Lenczowski, G. (1962). The Middle East in World Affairs (3rd Edition). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. p. 723
In early April 1948, the Israelis launched Plan Dalet, a large-scale offensive to capture land and empty it of Palestinian Arabs.;
During the offensive, Israel captured and cleared land that the UN partition resolution had allocated to the Palestinians.;
Over 200 villages were destroyed during this period.;
Massacres and expulsions continued,;
including at Deir Yassin (9 April 1948).;
Major Palestinian cities were depopulated, including Tiberias (18 April), Haifa (23 April), Acre (6–18 May), Safed (10 May), Jaffa (13 May), and West Jerusalem's Palestinian Arab neighborhood (24 April).;
Israel began engaging in biological warfare in April and well poisoning of certain towns and villages. In May, one such operation caused a Typhoid fever epidemic in Acre; the Egyptians foiled another attempt in Gaza.;
Under intense public anger over Palestinian losses, and seeking to take Palestinian territory for themselves to counter the Israeli-Jordanian deal, the remaining Arab League states decided in late April and early May to enter the war after the British left.;
But the newly independent Arab League states' armies were still weak and unprepared for war,;
and none of the Arab League states were interested in establishing an independent Palestinian state with Amin al-Husseini at its head. Neither the expansionist King Abdullah I of Jordan nor the British wanted the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.;
On 14 May, the Mandate formally ended, the last British troops left, and Israel declared independence.;
By that time, Palestinian society was destroyed and over 300,000 Palestinians had been expelled or fled.;
The first truce between Israel and the Arab League nations was signed in early June and lasted about a month. In the summer of 1948, Israel began implementing anti-repatriation policies to prevent the return of Palestinians to their homes.;
A Transfer Committee coordinated and supervised efforts to prevent Palestinian return, including the destruction of villages, resettlement of Arab villages with Jewish immigrants, confiscation of land, and dissemination of propaganda discouraging return.;
During the ten days of renewed fighting between Israel and the Arab states after the first truce, over 50,000 Palestinians were expelled from Lydda and Ramle (9–13 July).;
A second truce was signed in mid-July and lasted until October. During the two truces, Palestinians who returned to their homes or crops, called "infiltrators" by the Israelis, were killed or expelled.;
Most of the fighting between Israel and the Arab states ended by the winter.;
On 11 December 1948, the UN passed Resolution 194, which declared that Palestinians should be permitted to return to their homes and be compensated for lost or damaged property. The Resolution also established the United Nations Conciliation Commission.;
Armistices formally ending the war were signed between February and July 1949,;
but massacres and expulsions of Palestinians continued in 1949 and beyond.;
By the end of the war, Palestine was divided and Palestinians were scattered.;
Israel held about 78% of Palestine,;
including the 55% allocated to it by the UN partition plan and about half of the land allocated for a Palestinian state.;
The West Bank and Gaza Strip comprised the remaining half, and were held by Jordan and Egypt, respectively.;
The capital that was meant to be governed internationally (corpus separatum) was divided between an Israeli-held West Jerusalem and a Jordanian-held East Jerusalem.;
Israel, with its expanded borders, was admitted as a member to the United Nations in May 1949.;
About 156,000 Palestinians remained under military rule in Israel, including many internally displaced persons.;
The approximately 750,000 Palestinians who were expelled or fled from their homes were living in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.;
None were allowed to return.;
No Palestinian state was created.;
Massacres of Palestinians also continued after the war. Sixty-nine Palestinians were killed in the 1953 Qibya massacre. A few years later, 49 Palestinians were killed in the Kafr Qasim massacre, on the first day of the 1956 Suez Crisis.
Palestinians in Israel remained under strict martial law until 1966.;
Some 2,000 Palestinians were killed in a massacre led by the Lebanese Front at the Siege of Tel al-Zaatar in 1976, during the Lebanese Civil War. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon were killed or displaced during the 1982 Lebanon War, including between 800 and 3,500 killed in the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
In 2011, Israel passed the Nakba Law, which denies government funding to institutions that commemorate the Nakba.
The Gaza war has caused the highest Palestinian casualties since the 1948 war, (interview with Rashid Khalidi) and has raised fear among Palestinians that history will repeat itself. This fear was exacerbated when Israeli Agricultural Minister Avi Dichter said that the war would end with "Gaza Nakba 2023". Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuked Dichter.
Clause 10.(b) of the from the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States to the UN Secretary-General of 15 May 1948 justifying the intervention by the Arab States, the Secretary-General of the League alleged that "approximately over a quarter of a million of the Arab population have been compelled to leave their homes and emigrate to neighbouring Arab countries." In the period after the war, a large number of Palestinians attempted to return to their homes. Between 2,700 and 5,000 of them were killed by Israel, the vast majority being unarmed and intending to return for economic or social reasons.
The Nakba is described as ethnic cleansing by many scholars.;
They include Palestinian scholars such as
Saleh Abd al-Jawad,
Beshara Doumani,
Rashid Khalidi,
Adel Manna,
Nur Masalha,
Nadim Rouhana,
Ahmad H. Sa'di,
and
Areej Sabbagh-Khoury,
Israeli scholars such as
Alon Confino,
Amos Goldberg,
Baruch Kimmerling,
Ronit Lentin,
Ilan Pappé,
and
Yehouda Shenhav,
and foreign scholars such as
Abigail Bakan,
Elias Khoury,
Mark Levene,
Derek Penslar,
and
Patrick Wolfe,
among other scholars.
Other scholars, such as Yoav Gelber, Benny Morris, and Seth J. Frantzman, disagree that the Nakba constitutes an ethnic cleansing. Morris in 2016 rejected the description of "ethnic cleansing" for 1948, while also stating that the label of "partial ethnic cleansing" for 1948 was debatable. In 2004 Morris was responding to the claim of "ethnic cleansing" occurring in 1948 by stating that, given the alternative was "genocide - the annihilation of your people," there were "circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing ... It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland ... 'cleanse' the term they used at the time ... there was no choice but to expel the Palestinian population. To uproot it in the course of war". Morris said this resulted in a "partial" expulsion of Arabs.
Still other scholars use different frameworks than "ethnic cleansing": for example, Richard Bessel and Claudia Haake use "forced removal" and Alon Confino uses "forced migration".
At the same time, many of those Palestinians who remained in Israel became internally displaced. In 1950, UNRWA estimated that 46,000 of the 156,000 Palestinians who remained inside the borders demarcated as Israel by the 1949 Armistice Agreements were internally displaced refugees. As of 2003, some 274,000 Arab citizens of Israel – or one in four in Israel – were internally displaced from the events of 1948.
A variety of laws were promulgated in Israel to legalize the expropriation of Palestinian land.
The first Israeli Nationality Law, passed on 14 July 1952, denationalized Palestinians, rendering the former Palestinian citizenship "devoid of substance", "not satisfactory and is inappropriate to the situation following the establishment of Israel".Lauterpacht, H. (ed.). "International Law Reports 1950" (London: Butterworth & Co., 1956), p.111
These factors have resulted in a Palestinian identity of "suffering", whilst the deterritorialization of the Palestinians has created a uniting factor and focal point in the desire to return to their lost homeland.
Since the late 1990s, the phrase "ongoing Nakba" () has emerged to describe the "continuous experience of violence and dispossession" experienced by the Palestinian people. This term enjoins the understanding of the Nakba not as an event in 1948, but as an ongoing process that continues through to the present day.
On November 11, 2023, Israeli Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter remarked in an interview on N12 News on the nature of the Gaza war that "From an operational standpoint, you cannot wage a war like the IDF wants to in Gaza while the masses are between the tanks and the soldiers," he said. "It's the 2023 Gaza Nakba."
The word was used again one year later by the Palestinian poet Burhan al-Deen al-Abushi. Zureiq's students subsequently founded the Arab Nationalist Movement group in 1952, one of the first post-Nakba Palestinian political movements. In a six-volume encyclopedia Al-Nakba: Nakbat Bayt al-Maqdis Wal-Firdaws al-Mafqud ( The Catastrophe: The Catastrophe of Jerusalem and the Lost Paradise) published between 1958 and 1960, Aref al-Aref wrote: "How can I call it but Nakba "catastrophe"? When we the Arab people generally and the Palestinians particularly, faced such a disaster (Nakba) that we never faced like it along the centuries, our homeland was sealed, we were expelled from our country, and we lost many of our beloved sons." Muhammad Nimr al-Hawari also used the term Nakba in the title of his book Sir al Nakba ( The Secret behind the Disaster) written in 1955.
The use of the term has evolved over time. Initially, the use of the term Nakba among Palestinians was not universal. For example, for many years after 1948, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon avoided and even actively resisted using the term, because it lent permanency to a situation they viewed as temporary, and they often insisted on being called "returnees". In the 1950s and 1960s, terms they used to describe the events of 1948 included al-'ightiṣāb ("the rape"), or were more euphemistic, such as al-'aḥdāth ("the events"), al-hijra ("the exodus"), and lammā sharnā wa-tla'nā ("when we blackened our faces and left"). Nakba narratives were avoided by the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon in the 1970s, in favor of a narrative of revolution and renewal. Interest in the Nakba by organizations representing refugees in Lebanon surged in the 1990s due to the perception that the refugees' right of return might be negotiated away in exchange for Palestinian statehood, and the desire was to send a clear message to the international community that this right was non-negotiable.
Shmuel Trigano, writing in the Jewish Political Studies Review, outlines the evolution of the Nakba narrative through three stages. Initially, it depicted Palestinians as victims displaced by Israel's creation to make way for Jewish immigrants. The next phase recast the Six-Day War as Israel's colonization of Palestinian lands, aligning the Palestinian cause with anti-colonial sentiments. The final stage leverages Holocaust memories, accusing Israel of apartheid, resonating with Western guilt over the Holocaust. He argues these evolving interpretations omit complex historical factors involving failed attempts to eliminate Israel, contested territorial claims, and Jewish refugee displacement from Arab nations.
According to this narrative, the Palestinian Arabs voluntarily fled their homes during the war, encouraged by Arab leaders who told Palestinians to temporarily evacuate so that Arab armies could destroy Israel, and then upon losing the war, refused to integrate them. This viewpoint also contrasts Jewish refugees absorbed by Israel with Palestinian refugees kept stateless by Arab countries as political pawns. In contrast to the Palestinian narrative, claims that Arab villages were depopulated and that Palestinian homes were destroyed are not acknowledged by the mainstream Israeli narrative, typically using terminology such as "abandoned" property and "population exchange" rather than "confiscated" or "expelled".
In May 2009, Yisrael Beiteinu introduced a bill that would outlaw all Nakba commemorations, with a three-year prison sentence for such acts of remembrance. Following public criticism, the bill draft was changed, the prison sentence dropped and instead the Minister of Finance would have the authority to reduce state funding for Israeli institutions found to be "commemorating Independence Day or the day of the establishment of the state as a day of mourning"., translation by Adalah The new draft was approved by the Knesset in March 2011, and became known as the Nakba Law. In 2011, the Knesset passed the Nakba Law, forbidding institutions from commemorating the event. According to Neve Gordon, a school ceremony memoralizing the Nakba would, under the 2011 law, have to respond to charges that it incited racism, violence and terrorism, and denied Israel's democratic character, in doing so. In 2023, after the United Nations instituted a commemoration day for the Nakba on 15 May, the Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan remonstrated that the event itself was antisemitism. The implementation of the new law unintentionally promoted knowledge of the Nakba within Israeli society.
Nakba denial has been described as still prevalent in both Israeli and American discourse and linked to various tropes associated with anti-Arab racism. The 2011 'Nakba Law' authorized the withdrawal of state funds from organizations that commemorate the day on which the Israeli state was established as a day of mourning, or that deny the existence of Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state." Israeli grassroots movements, such as Zochrot, aim to commemorate the Nakba through public memorials and events. In May 2023, following the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas made the denial of the 1948 expulsion a crime punishable by two years in jail.
Elias Khoury writes that the works of Edward Said were important for taking a "radically new approach" to the Nakba than those of Zureiq and other early adopters of the term, whose usage had "the connotation of a natural catastrophe" and thus freed "Palestinian leadership and Arab governments from direct responsibility for the defeat."
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