What is the Nakba? | World News

So what is the Nakba?

Well, it’s an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” that is used to describe the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the period between 1947 and 1949, a period that saw the end of the British Mandate in Palestine and, in 1948, the establishment of the State of Israel.

During this time, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians fled, were expelled or left due to the pressures of war, and over 400 villages were depopulated or destroyed.

This population became refugees in neighbouring territories such as the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, as well as in a wider global diaspora.

Historians differ in their analysis of the causes and motivations behind this.

For Palestinians, the Nakba is a foundational source of ongoing trauma. Many, along with a range of international historians, have described these events as ethnic cleansing that took people’s land and denied them the right to return.

For most Israelis, meanwhile, also supported by other historians, the events were part of the country’s existential War of Independence, waged against Arab states that refused to accept the UN’s Partition Plan in 1947.

The Nakba, they say, can only be understood by recognising the impact of a broader regional conflict.

Others, including some of the so-called “New Historians”, have used Israeli archival sources to argue that expulsions, fear of violence, and deliberate policies by some Zionist leaders were the main cause of the refugee crisis, although they differ on the extent to which these expulsions reflected deliberate policy.

The Nakba is both a historical event and one with ongoing political and societal consequences.

Today, there are an estimated 5.9 million people registered with the UN as Palestinian refugees, including in camps across the region.