IMEU Institute for Middle East Understanding
Fact Sheets
The Palestinian “Nakba” (“catastrophe” in Arabic) refers to the mass expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from British Mandate Palestine during Israel’s creation (1947-49). The Nakba was not an unintended result of war. It was a deliberate and systematic act necessary for the creation of a Jewish majority state in historic Palestine, which was overwhelmingly Arab prior to 1948.
on April 5, 2023
Fact Sheets
Since Israel’s establishment in 1948, the United Nations and international community have not recognized the sovereignty of any country to any part of Jerusalem in the absence of a permanent peace agreement in the region.
on May 4, 2018
In a field south of Haifa, near an Arab village that was depopulated and abandoned in 1948, children read the lyrics of nationalist anthems from their iPhones, while their elders sat beneath awnings, listening to dignitarites and musicians.
on April 19, 2018
Seventy years ago, the world changed around my family. The establishment of the state of Israel represented self-determination for Jews, but a catastrophe — “nakba” in Arabic — for Palestinians. In the area around the Mediterranean city of Haifa, where my family has lived for six generations, only 2,000 Palestinians of a population of 70,000 remained.
on April 18, 2018
When Zionist militias forced my grandmother, Rasmiyyah, and her family out of their home in Safad at gunpoint during the 1948 Nakba, the process of settler-colonialism that was propelled by the Balfour Declaration and that culminated in ethnic cleansing became more than just a national tragedy for the indigenous people of Palestine. It became personal.
on November 2, 2017
It was the moment of conception of what would become the State of Israel — or it was the original sin in which Israel was conceived. The Balfour Declaration, the pivotal, 67-word assurance by the British foreign secretary that promised support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” turned 100 on Thursday, meeting with tributes in Jerusalem and London, and tear gas in Bethlehem.
on November 2, 2017
Fact Sheets
The policies of discrimination and displacement that Israel has implemented against Palestinians in the lands it has military occupied since the 1967 war are part of a larger program of dispossession of Palestinians dating to Israel’s establishment in 1948 and encompassing Palestinians citizens of Israel as well.
on June 8, 2017
Videos
“It was the worst scene ever when we were pushed out [by Zionist forces]. Only God knows how much I cried.” A Nakba survivor, 86-year-old Ibrahim lived through displacement in 1948 and has endured 50 years of Israeli occupation.
on June 6, 2017
Videos
Fadwa Khalil was 9 years old when Israel occupied the West Bank, pushing her family out of their home. It was the second time her family was displaced, after Israel forced them out them as part of the ethnic cleansing of 1948.
on June 5, 2017