"We shall try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian] population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." - Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, 1895

Emergence of Political Zionism & Beginning of Zionist Dispossession of Indigenous Palestinians (Late 19th-Early 20th Century)

In the centuries prior to the rise of political Zionism in Europe in the late 1800s, relations between the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities in Palestine, then a province in the Ottoman Empire, were relatively good. While there was occasional conflict, compared to the plight of Jews in Europe, the Ottoman Empire and the Arab-Muslim Middle East were a haven.
In the mid-1800s, influenced by the nationalism sweeping much of the continent, some European Jews decided that the solution to persecution in Europe and Russia was the establishment of a nation state for Jews in Palestine. Some of them began emigrating to Palestine and colonizing it. In 1874, there were about 14,000 Jews in Palestine, and about 426,000 Muslims and Christians.
In 1896, Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl, considered the father of modern political Zionism, catalyzed the movement with the publication of "The Jewish State." The following year Herzl was elected president of the First Zionist Congress, held in Basel, Switzerland.
As they arrived in Palestine, early Zionist colonists began to dispossess indigenous Palestinian Muslims and Christians, particularly small tenant farmers known as fellahin, who were often forced off lands their families had worked for generations to make way for colonies established by European Jews who intended to "redeem" the land through the use of Jewish labor.
Organizations like the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), founded in 1891, and the Jewish National Fund (JNF), founded in 1901, played a key role in the dispossession of Palestinians, acquiring land for the Zionist enterprise in Palestine, frequently purchasing it from large Ottoman Turkish landowners who lived abroad. (The JCA was disbanded in 1957.) The quasi-governmental JNF continues to play an important role in the distribution of state lands and the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians in Israel and the occupied Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem, denying Palestinian and other non-Jewish citizens of Israel access to the 13% of state lands it controls directly, and the 93% total overall its leadership has sway over via the Israel Land Authority.)
In 1903, there were approximately 25,000 Jews in Palestine, and about 500,000 Muslims and Christians.

Zionist plans for "transfer" of indigenous Palestinians

From the earliest days of the movement, Zionist leaders struggled with how to deal with indigenous Muslim and Christian Palestinians who comprised a large majority of the population of the land on which they wanted to establish a Jewish state. Most, including Herzl, concluded the only solution was what became known as "transfer," a euphemism for what today would be called "ethnic cleansing.”
In June 1895 Herzl wrote in his diary: "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."
In August 1937, “transfer” was discussed at the Twentieth Zionist Congress in Zurich, Switzerland. Alluding to the systematic dispossession of Palestinian farmers that the JNF and Zionist colonists had been engaged in for decades, the leader of the Zionist community in Palestine (the Yishuv) and Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, stated:

"You are no doubt aware of the JNF's activity in this respect. Now a transfer of a completely different scope will have to be carried out. In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin." He added: "Jewish power [in Palestine], which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out this transfer on a large scale."

In June 1938, transfer was the major focus of a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, the de facto government of the Yishuv. Arthur Ruppin, head of the Jewish Agency from 1933 to 1935 and one of the founders of Tel Aviv, declared: "I do not believe in the transfer of individuals. I believe in the transfer of entire villages." Ben-Gurion argued in favor of transfer as well, stating: "With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement]... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it."
Summing up the views of most Zionist leaders, in December 1940, Joseph Weitz, director of the JNF's Lands Department, wrote in his diary:

"There is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, and to transfer all of them, save perhaps for [the Arabs of] Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one [Bedouin] tribe.”

The dispossession of indigenous Palestinians in order to establish and maintain a Jewish majority state in Palestine was and remains the root cause of all the violence in Palestine/Israel. Today, senior Israeli political and religious leaders continue to advocate for the expulsion of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship as well as Palestinians living under Israeli military rule in the occupied Palestinian territories (West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza).

World War I: The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, the Sykes-Picot Agreement & the Balfour Declaration (1914-1918)

During World War I (1914-1918), the Middle East became a battleground, with Britain and its allies seeking to undermine the rule of the Ottoman Empire in the region. In the course of the war, the British government made contradictory promises, first to Arabs and then to Zionist Jews, regarding the future of Palestine, and made a secret deal with France to keep Palestine under British colonial rule after the war.
Between July 1915 and March 1916, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and Sharif Hussein bin Ali of the city of Mecca, exchanged a series of letters in which the British government promised to support the creation of an independent Arab state in the Middle East, including Palestine, in exchange for the launching of an Arab rebellion against Ottoman rule. Their letters became known as the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence.
Almost immediately after concluding the agreement with Hussein supporting the creation of an Arab state in the region, in May 1916 the British signed a secret pact with France, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, to divide much of the Middle East into British and French colonial spheres of influence following the war, with Palestine falling under British control.
In another blatant contradiction of the commitment made to the Arabs in the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, in November 1917 British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour sent a letter to Baron Rothschild, a leader of the Jewish community in Britain, endorsing “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” The Balfour Declaration was a major diplomatic victory for Zionist leaders, who sought the support of a great power to realize their plans in Palestine.
In 1922, the United States government released the results of an official investigation conducted three years earlier on the situation in Palestine and other areas of the former Ottoman Empire. In commenting on the Balfour Declaration, the King-Crane Commission Report noted:

"For 'a national home for the Jewish people' is not equivalent to making Palestine into a Jewish State; nor can the erection of such a Jewish State be accomplished without the gravest trespass upon the 'civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.' The fact came out repeatedly in the Commission's conference with Jewish representatives, that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, by various forms of purchase."

The British Mandate for Palestine (1923-1948)

Following World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Britain came to control Palestine under the terms of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The newly created League of Nations endorsed what amounted to British colonial rule over the area, known as the British Mandate for Palestine, in 1923. The mandate was supposed to be a temporary measure on the road to independence for Palestine.
The 1920s witnessed increased conflict between Zionist Jews and Palestinian Muslims and Christians, as the number of Jewish immigrants from Europe grew rapidly under British rule and more and more Palestinians were displaced as a result. Between 1922 and 1931, the Jewish population of Palestine more than doubled, from approximately 84,000 to approximately 175,000. During the same period, the Muslim and Christian population grew from approximately 664,000 to approximately 850,000.
In 1920, 1921, and most seriously in 1929, bouts of violence erupted between Muslim and Christian Palestinians and Jews, claiming hundreds of lives on both sides. In 1929, the unrest was also fueled by frustration with the British, who had failed to end their colonial rule or grant independence to Palestine.
Following the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933, Jewish immigration to Palestine from Europe greatly increased, as Hitler's fascist regime instituted racist laws targeting Jews and other minorities and a European war grew imminent. Between 1931 and 1939, the Jewish population of Palestine more than doubled again, from approximately 175,000 to approximately 474,000. During the same period, the Muslim and Christian population grew from approximately 850,000 to approximately 1,050,000.
Throughout the 1930s, tensions between Palestinians, Zionist Jews, and the British continued to mount, culminating in the Arab Revolt starting in 1936.

The Arab Revolt in Palestine (1936-1939)

In 1936, a major rebellion against British rule and Zionist colonization began. Initially, the Arab Revolt in Palestine consisted mainly of nonviolent actions such as labor strikes, boycotts, withholding payment of taxes, and protests. When this failed to cause the British to leave or halt the immigration of Zionist colonists, a widespread armed uprising broke out in 1937.
In April 1937, the Arab Higher Committee was formed by a group of Palestinian notables, which would act as the main political leadership of the Palestinian national movement until 1948.
With the help of Zionist militias and the use of brutal force, the British finally managed to suppress the Arab Revolt in 1939. The same year, the British government issued a policy statement known as the White Paper of 1939. In it, the British retreated from an earlier recommendation made in 1937's Peel Commission Report calling for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, and instead endorsed the creation of an independent binational Palestinian state governed by Arabs and Jews in proportion to their size of the population. The White Paper also set limits on immigration into the country.
In crushing the Arab Revolt, the British severely weakened the Palestinian national movement by killing, jailing, and exiling Palestinian leaders, suppressing Palestinian political activity, and disarming Palestinian fighters. While the British violently suppressed the Palestinian national movement, they allowed and encouraged the Zionist movement to arm itself and "carve out an independent enclave for itself in Palestine as the infrastructure for a future state," in the words of Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p. 15). This would have profound implications in the struggle for Palestine over the next decade.

The Irgun & Lehi: Zionist terrorism on the rise (1937-1948)

In 1931, a far-right paramilitary group called the Irgun (also known as Etzel) was formed as an offshoot of the main Zionist militia in Palestine, the Haganah (the predecessor of the Israeli army). The Irgun sought to establish a Jewish state in all of Palestine as well as parts of neighboring Arab countries like Jordan, believing the use of violence was the only way to achieve their goal. The Irgun's leaders included future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who also founded the forerunner of today's Likud Party, the Herut, in 1948.
Between 1937 and 1948, when it was integrated into the newly established Israeli army, the Irgun waged a campaign of terrorism and violence against Palestinian civilians and the British. The Irgun, which was considered a terrorist organization by the British and American governments, carried out dozens of bombings and other attacks against Palestinian targets such as markets and other public places, killing hundreds of civilians. Although most of their attacks were carried out in Palestine, the Irgun also attacked British targets abroad, bombing the British embassy in Rome in 1946 and a British military train in Austria in 1947.
In October 1937, the Irgun carried out a series of large-scale bombings against Palestinian civilians across the country, marking the first time civilians were systematically targeted with terrorist attacks in public places in the region. As Israeli historian Benny Morris noted in his book, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1998, these attacks:

[...introduced] a new dimension into the conflict... Now, for the first time, massive bombs were placed in crowded Arab centers, and dozens of people were indiscriminately murdered and maimed… This 'innovation' soon found Arab imitators and became something of a 'tradition': during the coming decades Palestine's (and, later, Israel's) marketplaces, bus stations, movie theaters, and other public buildings became routine targets, lending a particularly brutal flavor to the conflict."

The Irgun's most high-profile attack was the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in July 1946, which killed 91 people, including 28 British citizens. The hotel was targeted because it was home to the British administrative and military headquarters in Palestine. (In 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended a ceremony at the hotel for the unveiling of a plaque honoring the bombers, drawing the ire of the British government which sent a letter to the mayor of Jerusalem stating: "We don't think it's right for an act of terrorism to be commemorated.")
In 1940, a splinter group of the Irgun, Lehi (also known as the Stern Gang), was formed. Lehi, which would later be led by another future Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, also carried out numerous terrorist attacks against Palestinian, British, and other civilian targets. The most notorious Lehi attacks include the assassinations of Lord Moyne, the British Minister Resident in the Middle East in 1944, and Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat appointed United Nations Mediator in Palestine, in 1948. As an official with the Red Cross during World War II, Bernadotte had helped to save thousands of Jews and others from the Nazis.
Members of the Irgun and Lehi committed the notorious massacre of more than 100 Palestinian men, women, and children in the village of Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem, on April 16, 1948. The Deir Yassin Massacre triggered a mass flight of Palestinians from their homes and land in and around Jerusalem and beyond. It was a pivotal moment in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that was carried out by Zionist militias and the new Israeli army in order to establish Israel as a Jewish majority state in Palestine.

World War II (1939-1945)

The outbreak of World War II in September 1939 was a major turning point for the Zionist movement and the Palestinian struggle for independence. Once again, the Middle East became a battleground between Germany and its allies and Britain and its allies.
Most Zionist groups in Palestine temporarily put aside their fight against the British as the war against Germany took precedence. The leadership of the Arab Higher Committee sought the support of the Germans in their struggle against the British, as did other national liberation movements fighting British rule like the Irish Republican Army, and even some right-wing Zionists like Lehi.
After the war and the revelation of the crimes carried out against Jews by the Nazis, the Zionist campaign for a Jewish state intensified and gained increasing international support, including in the United States, which would soon take over from the British as the dominant western power in the Middle East. For many in the West, the guilt of not doing enough to stop the Holocaust, and of shutting their borders to Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis before and during the war, outweighed any considerations they may have had for the rights or wishes of the indigenous people of Palestine, who would be forced out of their homes and their land taken so Israel could be established as a Jewish-majority state.

2. The Nakba: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine & Establishment of Israel's Apartheid System

"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. [Yigal] Allon repeated his question, 'What is to be done with the Palestinian population [of the towns of Ramie and Lydda],?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'... I agreed that it was essential to drive the inhabitants out." - Yitzhak Rabin, future Israeli prime minister, July 1948

The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (November 1947)

In February 1947, seeking to extricate itself from a steadily deteriorating situation on the ground, including the terrorist campaign being waged against British targets by the Irgun and Lehi, Britain announced that it would end its mandate and turn over responsibility for the future of Palestine to the newly-created United Nations.
After intense lobbying by Zionist organizations and their supporters in Europe and the U.S., on November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181 calling for the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The final vote was 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions and 1 absent. Those voting in favor included both emerging superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. The British abstained.
The Partition Plan allocated approximately 55% of Palestine to the Jewish state and just 42% to the Arab state, despite the fact that Jews made up only about a third of the population, many of whom were recent immigrants from Europe, and only owned about 7% of the privately owned land. Jerusalem was to be placed under international administration. (See here for map: Palestinian and Zionist land ownership in 1945.)
The Arab Higher Committee rejected the plan, as well as the idea that Palestinians should give up more than half their country to newly arrived European immigrants who owned only a tiny amount of the land they were being given. For its part, the Zionist leadership under Ben-Gurion publicly welcomed the plan, as it meant international legal recognition for a Jewish state in Palestine, while having no intention of being bound by its proposed borders. As Ben-Gurion put it, the borders of the new Jewish state, "will be determined by force and not by the partition resolution."

Beginning of Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Muslims & Christians (December 1947-May 1948)

Almost immediately after the passing of the partition plan, renewed violence broke out and the large-scale dispossession of Palestinians began. As December progressed, the Irgun and other Zionist paramilitaries intensified their attacks against Palestinian civilians and the British, killing and wounding hundreds.
By the end of December, almost 75,000 Palestinians had already been driven from their homes by Zionist paramilitaries.
In early January, members of the Arab Liberation Army (ALA), a group of volunteers from neighboring countries formed by the Arab League, entered Palestine to help the outnumbered and outgunned Palestinian defenders. The volunteers were disorganized, poorly armed and trained, and failed to coordinate with local Palestinian fighters due to hostility between the Arab League and the Arab Higher Committee. In April 1948, the British High Commissioner of Palestine, Alan Cunningham, described the ALA as "poorly equipped and badly led." Predicting an easy Zionist victory, Cunningham added: "In almost every engagement the Jews have proved their superiority in organisation, training and tactics."
Surveying the situation, Ben-Gurion was also confident of an easy victory. In February, in response to a letter from Moshe Sharett (who would become Israel's second prime minister) complaining that Zionist fighters were insufficiently armed to "take over the country," Ben-Gurion replied:

"If we will receive in time the arms we have already purchased, and maybe even receive some of that promised to us by the UN, we will be able not only to defend [ourselves] but also to inflict death blows on the Syrians in their own country - and take over Palestine as a whole. I am in no doubt of this. We can face all the Arab forces. This is not a mystical belief but a cold and rational calculation based on practical examination."

According to the historian Pappe, by May 1948 the Zionists had about 30,000 fighters and 20,000 auxiliaries, with a small air force, navy, and units of tanks and heavy artillery, versus no more than about 7,000 Palestinian irregulars and 3,000 Arab volunteers who were poorly armed and equipped.

Adoption of Plan Dalet: Blueprint for ethnic cleansing (March 1948)

On March 10, 1948, the Zionist leadership under Ben-Gurion formally approved Plan Dalet (also known as Plan D), the blueprint for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The operational military orders of Plan Dalet specified which Palestinian communities should be targeted and laid out in detail a plan for their forcible depopulation and destruction. It called for:

“Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously…

“Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.”

As Israeli historian Morris, a right-wing Zionist who has lamented that the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 didn’t go far enough, observed in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem: 1947-1949, Plan Dalet was "a strategic-ideological anchor and basis for expulsions by front, district, brigade and battalion commanders" providing "post facto, a formal, persuasive covering note to explain their actions." Morris also noted:

"Ben-Gurion always refrained from issuing clear or written expulsion orders; he preferred that his generals 'understand' what he wanted done. He wished to avoid going down in history as the 'great expeller.’”

Expulsions of Palestinians accelerate (April 1948)

After the Haganah began attacks under Plan Dalet in the beginning of April 1948 expulsions of Palestinian Muslims and Christians from their homes accelerated and became more systematic. According to Morris:

"In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves."

On April 9, members of the Irgun and Stern Gang attacked the village of Deir Yassin outside of Jerusalem, massacring more than 100 men, women, and children. News of the massacre spread quickly, fueling panic and the mass flight of Palestinians. (See below for more on the massacre at Deir Yassin and other atrocities carried out against Palestinian civilians.)
In late April, all but 4,000 of the 70,000 Arab inhabitants of the city of Haifa were expelled. The operation officer of the Haganah forces that conquered Haifa, Mordechai Maklef - who would later become chief of staff of the Israeli army - ordered his troops to "Kill any Arab you encounter; torch all inflammable objects, and force doors open with explosives." (Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p. 95) Crowds of Palestinians seeking safety in a marketplace near the port were deliberately shelled by Zionist forces, causing a panicked flight towards the waterfront as people rushed to evacuate by sea. Many drowned as overloaded boats sank attempting to shuttle people to safety. A witness recalled the terrible scene:

"Men stepped on their friends and women on their own children. The boats in the port were soon filled with living cargo. The overcrowding in them was horrible. Many turned over and sank with all their passengers." (Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p. 96)

Many of the attacks carried out by Zionist paramilitaries during this period - prior to Israel's declaration of independence and subsequent war with Arab states - were in areas outside of the borders of the Jewish state proposed in the UN Partition Plan. (See here for map of such operations carried out between April 1 and May 15)

British withdrawal, Israel's establishment & the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 (May 1948-March 1949)

By early May 1948, more than 200 Palestinian towns and villages had already been depopulated as people fled in fear or were forcibly expelled by Zionist forces, and between 250,000 and 350,000 Palestinians had been uprooted and made refugees.
On May 14, Ben-Gurion and the Zionist leadership declared an independent state of Israel. The next day, the British, who had stood by and done nothing to stop the expulsions of Palestinians in the preceding months, withdrew the last of their soldiers as armies from Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq launched a half-hearted and ill-fated attack against the newly declared state. None of the Arab governments wanted to intervene, but were compelled to do so by the force of public opinion in their countries, which sympathized with the Palestinians. In addition to being preoccupied with domestic concerns, the leaders of these countries, most of which had only recently acquired nominal independence from European colonial rule, were in fierce competition with one another and failed to coordinate their efforts in any serious way, frequently working at cross purposes.
Crucially, since the end of World War II, the government of King Abdullah I of Jordan had been holding secret discussions with the Zionist leadership and had agreed to divide Palestine up between Jordan and the new Jewish state. Abdullah viewed the Palestinian national movement as a threat and wanted to expand the borders of his country to include parts of Palestine. In July 1946, a British diplomat sent a cable to the government about a recent meeting with Abdullah, reporting that he "is for partition and he feels that the other Arab leaders may acquiesce in that solution, although they may not approve of it openly." As part of the agreement Abdullah pledged not to allow Jordan's British-trained armed forces, the Arab Legion - by far the best Arab army at the time - to take part in joint operations with other Arab armies against Israel in the event of war, or to enter areas of Palestine designated for the Jewish state under the Partition Plan.
The Iraqi government also ordered its armed forces not to enter areas that were supposed to be part of the Jewish state under the UN plan. For its part, the Syrian army barely advanced, maintaining a defensive posture for most of the war. The Lebanese, who had also declared war on Israel, didn't even send troops across the frontier. The Egyptian effort was also half-hearted and disorganized. As future Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who fought in the war, later wrote in his memoirs:
"This could not be a serious war. There was no concentration of forces, no accumulation of ammunition or equipment. There was no reconnaissance, no intelligence, no plans. Yet we were actually on the battleﬁeld... The only conclusion that could be drawn was that this was a political war, or rather a state of war and no-war. There was to be advance without victory and retreat without defeat.",
As predicted by Ben-Gurion, the combined Arab armies were no match for the new Israeli army. According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, by the end of the summer the new Israeli army had about 80,000 soldiers at its disposal, while the opposing Arab states didn't exceed 50,000 soldiers combined (Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p. 45). Moreover, many Zionist and Israeli fighters were veterans of World War II, experienced with the weaponry and tactics of modern warfare, while most Arab soldiers were not.
On May 24, just ten days after declaring independence, things were going so well for the Israelis militarily that Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary:
"We will establish a Christian state in Lebanon, the southern border of which will be the Litani River. We will break Transjordan [Jordan], bomb Amman and destroy its army, and then Syria falls, and if Egypt will still continue to fight - we will bombard Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo. This will be in revenge for what they (the Egyptians, the Aramis and Assyrians) did to our forefathers during Biblical times." (Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p. 144)

The same day, the Israelis received a shipment of weaponry from Eastern Europe, ensuring the supremacy of Israeli artillery for the rest of the war. (Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p. 144)
In late May, the Israeli government set up an unofficial body, the "Transfer Committee," to oversee the destruction of Palestinian towns and villages or their repopulation with Jews, and to prevent displaced Palestinians from returning to their homes. In a report presented to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion in June 1948, the three-man committee, which included the Jewish National Fund's Joseph Weitz, called for the "destruction of villages as much as possible during military operations."
From June to September, the expulsions continued. In July, Israeli forces expelled 70,000 Palestinians from the cities of Lydd and Ramla. In his memoirs, which were censored by the Israeli military but leaked to The New York Times in 1979, the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin recalled a conversation he had in July 1948 with Ben-Gurion, when Rabin was an officer in the Israeli army, regarding the fate of the Palestinians of Lydd and Ramla. Rabin wrote:
"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. [Commander Yigal] Allon repeated his question, 'What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'"
Rabin added, "I agreed that it was essential to drive the inhabitants out."
Expanding far beyond the proposed borders of the Jewish state delineated in the Partition Plan, which was allocated about 55% of Palestine, by the time Israeli forces stopped their advance they were in control of 78% of mandate Palestine. (See here for map of 1949 armistice lines) The remaining 22%, comprising the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza, fell under Jordanian and Egyptian control, respectively. Sixty-five years later, Israel has yet to officially declare its borders as it continues to colonize the West Bank and East Jerusalem, conquered during the June 1967 War.
From 1947 to 1950, between 750,000 and one million Palestinians were expelled by Zionist militias and then Israeli soldiers from the newly established Israeli state. It's estimated that about half of them fled under direct assault by Zionist paramilitaries.

Zionist massacres of Palestinians

During Israel's establishment, Zionist paramilitaries and the Israeli army carried out numerous massacres and atrocities against Palestinian civilians, including rapes, which were instrumental in spurring the mass flight of Palestinians that facilitated the establishment of a Jewish majority state. According to historian Benny Morris, there were two dozen such massacres.
The most notorious atrocity committed during Israel's establishment took place on April 9, 1948, in the village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem (close to where Israel's Holocaust Memorial now stands), where approximately 100 men, women, and children were murdered by members of the Irgun and Lehi. Seventy-five of the victims were women, children, or elderly people. According to eyewitness accounts from survivors and reports from Zionist fighters, many of the victims were paraded in trucks through the streets of Jerusalem before being killed. One eyewitness, Fahim Zaydan, who was 12-years-old at the time and was shot and left for dead, recalled:
"They took us out one after the other; shot an old man and when one of his daughters cried, she was shot too. Then they called my brother Muhammad, and shot him in front [of] us, and when my mother yelled, bending over him - carrying my little sister Hudra in her hands, still breastfeeding her - they shot her too." (Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p. 90)
Other notable atrocities against Palestinian civilians took place in the towns of Lydd (Lod), Dawayima, Saliha, Safsaf, and Tantura. Regarding the scope and nature of these massacres, in a 2004 interview with Haaretz newspaper, the historian Morris stated:
"In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved.

"The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October 1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion. "

That can't be chance. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres."

Palestinian refugees

From 1947 to 1950, between 750,000 and one million Palestinians were ethnically cleansed during the establishment of the state of Israel. It's estimated that about half of them fled under direct assault by Zionist forces.
To ensure that the newly established state retained a Jewish majority, two laws were passed: the Law of Return (1950), which grants Jews from anywhere in the world the right to immigrate to Israel and become a citizen, and the Entry into Israel Law (1952) which was designed to prevent the return of Palestinian refugees.
Today, the Palestinian refugee population is the largest and longest-standing population of displaced persons in the world. Reliable figures on their numbers are hard to find, however, a survey released in 2010 by BADIL, the Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, found the refugee and displaced population to be at least 7.1 million, made up of 6.6 million refugees and 427,000 internally displaced persons. It also found that refugees comprised 67% of the Palestinian population as a whole.
Most Palestinian refugees are Palestinians and their descendants who were expelled from their homes in the parts of historic Palestine that were incorporated into the newly established state of Israel in 1948. Other Palestinian refugee categories include Palestinians who fled their homes but remained internally displaced in areas that became Israel in 1948; Palestinians who were displaced for the first time after Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the 1967 War; Palestinians who left the occupied territories since 1967 and have been prevented by Israel from returning due to revocation of residency rights, denial of family reunification, or deportation; and Palestinians internally displaced in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip since 1967.
Most Palestinian refugees live in camps in the occupied territories and neighboring Arab countries, with 1.9 million in Jordan, 1.1 million in Gaza, some 779,000 in the West Bank, 427,000 in Syria (prior to the ongoing civil war), and 425,000 in Lebanon. Most rely on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), established in December 1949, to survive.

The Palestinian right of return

Under international law, all refugees have a legal right to return to homes and property left behind during conflict, regardless of whether they left of their own volition or were forcibly expelled. Moreover, as noted by Human Rights Watch, the right of return "is a right that persists even when sovereignty over the territory is contested or has changed hands."
In December 1948, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194 regarding the situation in Palestine/Israel. It states: "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible." The Palestinian right of return has been endorsed repeatedly by the UNGA, including through Resolution 3236 (1974), which "Reaffirms also the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return."
Israel's admittance as a member of the UN in May 1949 was conditioned on its acceptance of UN Resolution 194, which, 65 years later, it has yet to implement.
The Palestinian right of return has been recognized by major human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. In 2001, Amnesty issued a policy statement on the subject, which called "for Palestinians who fled or were expelled from Israel, the West Bank or Gaza Strip, along with those of their descendants who have maintained genuine links with the area, to be able to exercise their right to return."
The U.S. government supported Resolution 194, and consistently voted to affirm it until 1993, when the administration of President Bill Clinton began to refer to Palestinian refugee rights as a matter to be negotiated between the two parties in a final peace agreement. (See here for more on Palestinian refugees and the right of return)

Palestinian communities systematically destroyed or repopulated with Jewish immigrants, theft & destruction of Palestinian property

(See here for interactive map of Palestinian communities destroyed during Israel's establishment)

Between 1948 and 1950, Zionist and Israeli forces ethnically cleansed more than 400 Palestinian towns and villages, including homes, businesses, houses of worship, and vibrant urban centers, which were systematically destroyed or repopulated with Jews. Most of them were demolished to prevent the return of their Palestinian owners, now refugees outside of Israel's pre-1967 borders, or internally displaced inside of them.
During the 1948 War and immediately afterwards, Israel expropriated approximately 4,244,776 acres of land belonging to Palestinians who were made refugees during the establishment of the state.
In 1950, Israel passed the "Absentees' Property Law," which granted the government "custodianship" over lands and property belonging to Palestinian refugees, with no compensation for the owners. An "absentee" was defined as any Palestinian who left his or her home after November 1947, even if he or she remained within what became Israel's borders.
The total monetary loss of Palestinians dispossessed during Israel's establishment has been estimated at between of $100 billion and $200 billion (US) in today's dollars.
As Zionist and Israeli forces swept across the country, expelling Palestinians as they went, tens of thousands of Palestinian books were systematically "collected" by the Haganah and the Israeli army, in cooperation with the Israeli National Library. The books included priceless volumes of Palestinian Arab and Muslim literature, including poetry, works of history and fiction. Thousands of the books were destroyed and recycled for paper, while others were added to the library's collection. Today, many remain in the Israeli National Library, designated abandoned property.

3. The Ongoing Nakba & Israel’s Apartheid Regime (1948-Present)

“We must strive to cleanse the entire country [of Palestinians]" - Rabbi Dov Lior, influential leader of the religious Zionist movement and spiritual leader of the extreme right-wing Jewish Power party, longtime head of the settler Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) & chief rabbi of the settlement of Kiryat Arba, 2014

Palestinians who remained inside Israel post-1948

Approximately 150,000 Palestinians remained inside what became Israel's borders in 1948, many of them internally displaced. Most were granted Israeli citizenship but between 1949 and 1966 they were governed by repressive military rule, forced into segregated “ghettos,” had most of their land taken from them for the use of Jewish Israelis, and severe restrictions were imposed on their freedom of movement, speech, and ability to earn a living.
In 1949, there were approximately 30,000-40,000 Palestinians internally displaced within Israel, prevented from returning to their homes, which were destroyed or taken over by Jews. Today, Israel continues to refuse to recognize the rights of internally displaced Palestinians.
Between 1948 and 1967, Israel expropriated approximately 172,973 acres of land belonging to Palestinian citizens of the state.
Military rule was lifted in 1966 but Palestinians with Israeli citizenship continue to have their land taken from them and homes destroyed, and suffer from widespread, systematic discrimination affecting almost every aspect of their lives, simply because they aren’t Jewish.

The 1967 War: The Nakba redux

In the June 1967 War, the Israeli military occupied the Palestinian West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza, along with the Syrian Golan Heights, and Egyptian Sinai Peninsula (the latter was returned to Egypt as part of the 1978 Camp David Accords). In doing so, Israel came to control the 22% of Palestine that remained outside its expanded borders in 1948.
During and after the war, Israel forcibly displaced about 300,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, approximately 175,000 of whom were made refugees for the second time.
Immediately after the 1967 War, Israel expropriated approximately 209,792 acres of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, in violation of international law.

1967-Present: Israel’s apartheid regime & the Ongoing Nakba

Today, Israel continues to systematically dispossess, discriminate against, and oppress Palestinians inside Israel and in the territories Israel militarily occupied in 1967 (the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza), including stealing Palestinian land, making it nearly impossible for most Palestinians to get permits to build new homes, and destroying those that are built without permission. This continuing dispossession and oppression - which has never stopped since 1948 - is known as the Ongoing Nakba.
Inside Israel’s internationally-recognized pre-1967 borders, there are dozens of laws that privilege Jewish citizens and/or discriminate against indigenous Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, who make up more than 20% of Israel’s population. These laws impact everything from housing and land ownership rights, to health care, education, and family reunification rights.
Since 1967, Israel has governed Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, by violent, repressive military rule. Simultaneously, Israel continues to relentlessly colonize Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem with Jewish settlements in flagrant violation of international law, and to steal and destroy Palestinian homes, farms, and businesses. As of 2024, there are more than 700,000 Jewish settlers living illegally in about 350 official and unofficial Jewish settlements and settlement "outposts." Settlements and attendant infrastructure like Israeli-only roads cover about 42% of the area of the West Bank - much of it on privately-owned Palestinian land - dividing and isolating Palestinian communities into easily controlled ghettos surrounded by walls and Israeli military checkpoints.
In 2018, the Israeli government passed the “Jewish nation-state” law that codifies in Israel’s quasi-constitutional basic laws the privileged position that Jews born anywhere in the world have over indigenous Palestinians. Among other things, it declares Jews have a “unique” right to self-determination in the “State of Israel” (including the occupied Palestinian territories) and directs the state to regard “Jewish settlement as a national value” and to “act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation,” thereby making racially segregated housing official Israeli policy.
Since the early 2020s, there has been a growing consensus among human rights groups and other experts, including the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, that Israel’s racist system of oppression of the Palestinian people amounts to apartheid, echoing what Palestinians have been saying for decades. As noted by Amnesty International in its 2021 report, “Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity”:

“Israel has established and maintained an institutionalized regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population for the benefit of Jewish Israelis – a system of apartheid – wherever it has exercised control over Palestinians’ lives since 1948. Amnesty International concludes that the State of Israel considers and treats Palestinians as an inferior non-Jewish racial group. The segregation is conducted in a systematic and highly institutionalized manner through laws, policies and practices, all of which are intended to prevent Palestinians from claiming and enjoying equal rights to Jewish Israelis within the territory of Israel and within the [occupied Palestinian territories], and thus are intended to oppress and dominate the Palestinian people.”

4. Further Reference

Quick Facts: The Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe)
Explainer: Plan Dalet & The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Explainer: The Deir Yassin Massacre
In Their Own Words: Israeli Leaders on the Expulsion of Palestinians During Israel’s Establishment
Quick Facts: Palestinian Refugees
Fact Sheet: Palestinian Citizens of Israel
Fact Sheet: Is Israel an Apartheid State?
Explainer: Israel’s Settlement Enterprise (West Bank & East Jerusalem)
Explainer: Israel’s West Bank Wall
Quick Facts: East Jerusalem

Human rights reports

Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity, Amnesty International (2022)
A Threshold Crossed Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution, Human Rights Watch (2021)
A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid, B'Tselem (2021)

Books & articles

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe (2006)
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, by Rashid Khalidi (2020)
All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, by Walid Khalidi (1992, 2006)
Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876-1948, by Walid Khalidi (1984)
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, by Benny Morris (2004)
Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of Transfer in Zionist Political Thought; 1882-1948, by Nur Masalha (1992)
The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, by Rashid Khalidi (2006)
The Question of Palestine, by Edward Said (1992)
Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, edited by Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens (1988)
The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, by Avi Shlaim (2000)
War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, edited by Avi Shlaim and Eugene L. Rogan (2007
Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, by Norman G. Finkelstein (2003)
The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, by Simha Flapan (1988)
Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine, by Avi Shlaim (1988)
One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate, by Tom Segev (2001)
The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians, by Noam Chomsky (1983)
Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy, by Ben White (2011)
Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz newspaper interview with Benny Morris (2004)