Nakba
expulsion and flight of 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Palestine war
The Nakba (Arabic: النَّكْبَة, romanized: an-Nakba, lit. 'the catastrophe') is the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs by Zionists 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, during which Zionists depopulated territories in Mandatory Palestine and declared the establishment of the State of Israel, as well as to describe Israel's ongoing persecution and displacement 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 population – 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 the IDF. 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, 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.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Nakba” as expulsion and flight of 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Palestine war. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as expulsion and flight of 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Palestine war. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3266633. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1948.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Nakba”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Nakba primary sources, Nakba archive and Nakba research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Nakba”?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Nakba” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.