Nakba Day 2010 Hebron

The Nakba () is the ethnic cleansing; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; of Palestinian Arabs 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 the ongoing persecution and displacement of Palestinians by Israel. As a whole, it covers the fracturing of Palestinian society and the long-running rejection of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

During the foundational events of the Nakba in 1948, approximately half of Palestine's predominantly Arab population, or around 750,000 people, were 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. Dozens of massacres 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, 78% of the total land area of the former Mandatory Palestine was controlled by Israel.

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 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, although the official narrative has not changed.

Palestinians observe 15 May as Nakba Day, commemorating the war's events one day after Israel's Independence Day. In 1967, following the Six-Day War, another series of Palestinian exodus occurred; this came to be known as the Naksa (), and also has its own day, 5 June. The Nakba has greatly influenced Palestinian culture and is a foundational symbol of the current Palestinian national identity, together with the political cartoon character Handala, the Palestinian keffiyeh, and the Palestinian 1948 keys. Many books, songs, and poems have been written about the Nakba.

Ottoman and British Mandate periods (prior to 1948)

The roots of the Nakba are traced to the arrival of Zionists and their purchase of land in Ottoman Palestine in the late 19th century. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible. By the time the British announced their official support for Zionism in the 1917 Balfour Declaration during World War I, the population of Palestine was about 750,000, approximately 94% Arab and 6% Jewish.

After the partition of the Ottoman Empire, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine began in 1922. By then, the Jewish population had grown to around 10%. Both the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate for Palestine referred to the 90% Arab population as "existing non-Jewish communities."

Following World War II and the Holocaust, in February 1947, the British declared they would end the Mandate and submit the future of Palestine to the newly created United Nations for resolution. The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was created, and in September, submitted a report to the UN General Assembly recommending partition. Palestinians and most of the Arab League were opposed to the partition. Zionists accepted the partition but planned to expand Israel's borders beyond what was allocated to it by the UN. 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 was considered by detractors to be pro-Zionist, with 56% of the land allocated to the Jewish state although the Palestinian Arab population numbered twice the Jewish population. The plan was celebrated by most Jews in Palestine, with Zionist leaders, in particular David Ben-Gurion, viewing the plan as a tactical step and a stepping stone to future territorial expansion over all of Palestine.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 arrangement— not 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 in addition to the Arabs forming a two-thirds majority, they owned a majority of the lands. They also indicated an unwillingness to accept any form of territorial division, arguing that it violated the principles of national self-determination in the UN Charter which granted 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 implementation of the resolution.

The 1948 Nakba

The central facts of what happened in the Nakba during the 1948 Palestine war are well established, documented, and widely agreed upon by most Israeli, Palestinian, and other historians.
About 750,000 Palestinians—over 80% of the population living in the territory of what would become the State of Israel— were expelled or fled from their homes and became refugees.;
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Eleven Arab towns and cities, and over 500 villages were destroyed or depopulated.;
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Thousands of Palestinians were killed in dozens of massacres.
About a dozen rapes of Palestinians by regular and irregular Israeli military forces have been documented, and more are suspected.
Israelis used psychological warfare tactics to frighten Palestinians into flight, including targeted violence, whispering campaigns, radio broadcasts, and loudspeaker vans.
Looting by Israeli soldiers and civilians of Palestinian homes, business, farms, artwork, books, and archives was widespread.

Nov 1947 – May 1948

Small-scale local skirmishes began on 30 November and gradually escalated until March 1948.
When the violence started, Palestinians had already begun fleeing, expecting to return after the war.
The massacre and expulsion of Palestinian Arabs and destruction of villages began in December,
including massacres at Al-Khisas (18 December 1947),
and Balad al-Shaykh (31 December).
By March, between 70,000 and 100,000 Palestinians, mostly middle- and upper-class urban elites, were expelled or fled.

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 was allocated to the Palestinians by the UN partition resolution.
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), and Jaffa (13 May), and the Palestinian Arab neighborhood in West Jerusalem (24 April).
Israel began engaging in biological warfare in April and poisoned the water supplies of certain towns and villages. In May, one such operation caused a typhoid epidemic in Acre while another attempt in Gaza was foiled by the Egyptians.

Under intense public anger over Palestinian losses, and seeking to take Palestinian territory for themselves in order 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.
However, the armies of the newly independent Arab League states were still weak and unprepared for war,
and none of the Arab League states were interested in the establishment of 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.;
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May 1948 – Oct 1948

On 15 May, Arab League armies entered the territory of former Mandatory Palestine, beginning the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the second half of the 1948 Palestine war.
Most of the violence up to that point occurred in and around urban centers, in the Israeli portion of the partitioned land, while British troops were still present.
After the end of the Mandate, Israel seized more land allocated to the Palestinians by the UN partition plan, and expulsions, massacres, and the destruction of villages in rural areas increased. The Tantura massacre was committed on 22-23 May.

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 the 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, labelled "infiltrators" by the Israelis, were killed or expelled.

Oct 1948 – Jul 1949

Expulsions, massacres, and Israeli expansion continued in the autumn of 1948. This period saw the depopulation of Beersheba (21 October),
the al-Dawayima massacre (29 October),
and the Safsaf massacre (also 29 October).
In October, Israel converted the ''ad hoc'' military governates ruling over Palestinian Arabs in Israel into a formal military government. The new system controlled nearly all aspects of their lives, including curfews, travel restrictions, employment and other economic restrictions, arbitrary detention and other punishments, and political control.
Martial law assisted Israeli efforts to find and expel or kill "infiltrators" in order to prevent Palestinians from repopulating their villages.

Most of the fighting between Israel and the Arab states ended by the winter of 1948.
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 now held by Jordan and Egypt, respectively.
The capital that was meant to be governed internationally ( corpus separatum) was now 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 now living in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
None were allowed to return.
No Palestinian state was created.

Post-1948 Nakba

Martial law period (1949–1966)

The Nakba continued after the end of the war in 1949.;
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Israel prevented Palestinian refugees outside of Israel from returning.
Palestinians continued to be expelled, and more Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed, with new Israeli settlements established in their place.
Palestinian place names and the name "Palestine" itself were removed from maps and books.

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.

Naksa period (1967–1986)

During the 1967 Six-Day War, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees were driven from the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Most were driven into Jordan. This has become known as '' al-Naksa'' (the "setback").
After the war, Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Some two thousand 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.

Since the First Intifada (1987–present)

The First Intifada began in 1987 and lasted until the 1993 Oslo Accords.
The Second Intifada began in 2000.
In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza and blockaded it.
In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel has built the Israeli West Bank barrier and created Palestinian enclaves.

In 2011, Israel passed the Nakba Law, which denies government funding to institutions that commemorate the Nakba.

The 2023 Gaza war has caused the highest Palestinian casualties since the 1948 war, and has raised fears among Palestinians that history will repeat itself.
These fears were exacerbated when Israeli Agricultural Minister Avi Dichter said that the war would end with "Gaza Nakba 2023." Dichter was rebuked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Components

The Nakba encompasses the violent displacement and dispossession of Palestinians, along with the destruction of their society, culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations.; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

Displacement

During the 1947–49 Palestine war, an estimated 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled, comprising around 80% of the Palestinian Arab inhabitants of what became Israel. Almost half of this figure (over 300,000 Palestinians) had fled or had been expelled ahead of the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948. This fact was named as a ''casus belli'' for the entry of the Arab League into the country, sparking the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

Clause 10.(b) of the telegram 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' wasthe 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

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