6 Things to Know About the Palestinian Nakba by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) - May 12, 2026

Palestine refugees sit inside their tent in the newly formed Ein El Hilweh refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, in this handout picture believed to be taken in 1948. (Cropped) Myrtle Winter Chaumeny (this link opens in a new window), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons {{PD-US}}

 https://imeu.org/resources/the-nakba/6-things-to-know-about-the-palestinian-nakba/469

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1. During the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Zionist militias and the new Israeli army ethnically cleansed approximately three quarters of all Palestinians from their homeland. Palestinians call this the Nakba (“catastrophe”).

• About 750,000 indigenous Palestinians were violently forced from their homes and land during the founding of Israel. This mass expulsion of Palestinians was a deliberate, planned act of ethnic cleansing as part of Israel’s establishment as a Jewish-majority state in Palestine.
• Ever since, Israel has prevented Palestinian refugees from returning home because they aren’t Jewish, denying their internationally recognized legal right of return. Today, about two-thirds of all Palestinians, more than 7 million people, are stateless refugees or internally displaced. Most languish in overcrowded, impoverished semi-permanent refugee camps in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, subject to brutal Israeli military rule, or in neighboring countries and elsewhere in the diaspora.

2. Zionist militants and Israeli soldiers committed dozens of massacres of Palestinian civilians during the Nakba.

• Zionist militias and Israeli soldiers carried out several dozen massacres (this link opens in a new window) of Palestinians to terrorize them into fleeing. The most infamous took place in the village of Deir Yassin outside of Jerusalem on April 9, 1948, when more than 100 people, including dozens of children, women, and elderly people, were murdered by members of the Irgun and Stern Gang, which were led by future Israeli prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, respectively.
• The massacres that were perpetrated during the Nakba were a continuation of a more than decade-long campaign of terrorism waged by the Irun, Stern Gang, and other Zionist militias in their drive to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.

3. Israel was literally built upon the destruction of Palestine.

• After the new Israeli army finished expanding the state’s borders, Israel covered 78% of Palestine. (The Israeli military occupied the remaining 22%, consisting of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza, in the June 1967 war.)
• Between 1948 and 1950, Israel systematically destroyed more than 400 (this link opens in a new window) Palestinian cities and towns or repopulated them with Jewish Israelis. Entire communities, including homes, businesses, and houses of worship, were wiped out to prevent the return of their Palestinian owners.
• In many cases, the Israelis who took their land and homes also took the personal possessions of Palestinians who were forced to flee on short notice, including clothing, books, children’s toys, furniture, and household items like dishes, pots and pans.

4. Palestinians who survived the Nakba and remained inside what became Israel in 1948 were governed by brutal military rule for nearly two decades and today live as fourth-class citizens in their own homeland.

• About 150,000 Palestinians survived the Nakba and remained inside the new state of Israel. They were granted Israeli citizenship but between 1949 and 1966 they were governed by repressive military rule (this link opens in a new window), forced into segregated “ghettos (this link opens in a new window),” 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.
• Military rule was lifted in 1966 but today Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up more than 20% of Israel’s population, continue to have their land and homes taken or destroyed by the state and face widespread, systematic discrimination affecting almost every aspect of their lives, including land ownership rights, housing, employment, and family reunification.

5. The Nakba didn’t end in 1948 but has continued ever since. This is known as the Ongoing Nakba.

• Since 1948, Israel has continued to force Palestinian families out of their homes, including in places like Sheikh Jarrah (this link opens in a new window) in East Jerusalem and the Negev (Naqab) (this link opens in a new window) desert in southern Israel. It continues to steal Palestinian homes and land for illegal settlements. Israeli settlers are waging an intensifying (this link opens in a new window) campaign of terrorism backed by the government (this link opens in a new window), driving Palestinians out of their communities in the West Bank. Since 2023, the Israeli military has forcibly displaced nearly the entire population and systematically destroyed almost every home during its genocidal campaign in Gaza.

6. The Nakba and Ongoing Nakba, and the apartheid system Israel has imposed on Palestinians living under its control, are the root cause of all the violence in Palestine/Israel.

• For more than a century, Zionist groups and successive Israeli governments have been dispossessing and oppressing the Palestinian people, denying millions of Palestinians their freedom and the most basic of rights. This is the root cause of the problem between Israelis and Palestinians.
• There is a consensus among human rights organizations and other experts, including Amnesty International (this link opens in a new window), Human Rights Watch (this link opens in a new window), and Israeli rights groups like B’Tselem (this link opens in a new window) and Yesh Din (this link opens in a new window), that the discriminatory legal and political system that Israel has imposed on Palestinians amounts to apartheid.
• As noted (this link opens in a new window) by Amnesty International: “Israel must dismantle the apartheid system and start treating Palestinians as human beings with equal rights and dignity. Until it does, peace and security will remain a distant prospect for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

Go deeper

• Quick Facts: The Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe)
• Timeline: The Palestinian Nakba & Establishment of Israeli Apartheid
• 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: Is Israel an Apartheid State?

 

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The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) works to increase and enhance the public’s understanding about Palestine, Palestinians, and Palestinian Americans through media. We do this by offering mainstream US media organizations and journalists access to facts, resources, analysis, and experts in order to help them cover key issues with accuracy and depth, and by creating and disseminating original articles, fact sheets, videos, photo essays, and other digital content.