Talk:Nakba/Archive 3

Nakba definition short quotes

 * Sabbagh-Khoury 2023, p. 5 "expulsion of the majority of the Palestinian population", p. 122 "relatively swift collapse and disintegration of Palestinian society"
 * Abu-Laban 2022, p. 511 "violently forced to flee ... becoming stateless refugees ... dramatic disintegration of a society and a way of life.", p. 512 "occupation, land usurpation, displacement and being forced to live as refugees ... an ongoing continuity of trauma"
 * Manna 2022, p. 7 "severed connections among the Palestinian people and caused the loss of a homeland"
 * Sayigh 2022, p. 287 n.1 "expulsion ... ‘Israel’ replacing ‘Palestine’ in official recognition ... dispersed among multiple ‘host’ countries"
 * Gutman 2021, p. 2 "extensive loss and displacement", p. 4 "loss in the 1948 war ... massive displacement and dispossession"
 * Shenhav 2019, p. 61 "expulsion and displacement ... ban on return to homes and families immediately after the war and in fact to this date ... a formal act of ethnic cleansing"
 * Wermenbol 2021, p. 4 n. 21 "loss of “the homeland,” ... disintegration of society ... frustration of national aspirations ... destruction of Palestinian culture", p. 12 "erasure of Palestinians, along with our history, language and stories"
 * Slater 2020, p. 81 "massacres and expulsions of the Palestinians"
 * Khalidi 2020, p. 60 "Palestinian polity had been devastated and most of its society uprooted ... forced from their homes and lost their lands and property ... made refugees ... violent transformation, Israel controlled 78 percent of the territory of former Mandatory Palestine, and now ruled over the 160,000 Palestinian Arabs ... seismic upheaval", p. 76 "transformed most of Palestine from what it had been for well over a millennium—a majority Arab country—into a new state that had a substantial Jewish majority ... systematic ethnic cleansing of the Arab-inhabited areas of the country seized during the war ... theft of Palestinian land and property left behind by the refugees as well as much of that owned by those Arabs who remained in Israel", p. 82 "a world turned utterly upside down ... profound social disruption ... destitution—the loss of homes, jobs, and deeply rooted communities. Villagers lost their land and livelihoods and urbanites their properties and capital ... shattered the power of the country’s notables together with their economic base ... Social upheavals in much of the Arab world, often triggered by military-backed revolutions, would replace the notable class with younger leaders drawn from more diverse social strata. The Nakba produced the same result among the Palestinians.", p. 82 "an enduring touchstone of identity ... an abrupt collective disruption, a trauma ... At the same time as the Nakba provided a new focus for their collective identity, it broke up families and communities, dividing and dispersing Palestinians among multiple countries and distinct sovereignties .... subject to three different political regimes ... dispersal", pp. 88-89 "political formations ... irrevocably shattered"
 * Bashir 2018, Introduction "their defeat, their ethnic cleansing from Palestine,2 and the loss of their homeland ... having become a people living predominantly as refugees outside their land and as a fragmented minority living under occupation in their own land ... the destruction of hundreds of villages and urban neighborhoods, along with the cultural, economic, political, and social fabric of the Palestinian people ... the violent and irreparable disruption of the modern development of Palestinian culture, society, and national consciousness ... the ongoing colonization of Palestine that continues to the present through colonial practices and polices such as Jewish settlements, illegal land acquisition, imposing siege on Gaza, and the evacuation of villages ... largely miserable conditions of statelessness, occupation, fragmentation, rightlessness, and dispossession ... an explicitly continuing present ... aftermath of suffering and political weakness"
 * Nashef 2018, p. 6 "a multitude of emotions, namely, defeat, displacement, dispossession, exile, insecurity, lack of statehood and the continual struggle for survival ... a fall into chaos, damage and complete destruction ... The shared story of exile and pain ... the lost paradise ... the loss of the homeland and dignity"
 * Al-Hardan 2016, p. xi "the dispossession of more than half of historic Palestine’s population ... annihilation of at least four-fifths of Palestinian society ... the obliteration of at least 531 villages and eleven urban quarters", p. 2 "destruction and uprooting of the major part of Palestinian society"
 * Rashed 2014, p. 18 "‘transfer’, denial, elimination and discrimination"
 * Lentin 2013, ch. 2 "‘ethnic cleansing’ ... dispossessed Palestinians ... ‘internal refugees’ ... live side by side with those who expelled them, took over their lands and properties, reconceptualised them as ‘Israeli Arabs’, and continue to deprive them of their rights ... foundational event for the Palestinians, a memory and a narrative ... a series of catastrophic events whose influence continues to the present"
 * Sayigh 2013, p. 52 "ongoing source of suffering for the Palestinian people ... displacement ... continues today to disconnect them from their homeland, their communities, and their history. The loss of recognition of their rights to people- and state-hood ... an exceptional vulnerability to violence", p. 55, "not only severed Palestinians’ connection with a territory named Palestine, but also with their history and identity"
 * Masalha 2012, p. 1 "uprooting ... dismemberment and de-Arabisation of historic Palestine ... the name ‘Palestine’ was wiped off the map ... the most traumatic event in the history of the Palestinian people ... rupture of 1948 and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine are central to both the Palestinian society of today and Palestinian social history and collective identity. Resisting ethnic cleansing and politicide has been a key feature of the modern history of the Palestinians as a people.", p. 10 "both ‘politicide’ and ‘cultural genocide’ ... ethnic cleansing and politicide ... immediately followed by Nakba memoricide: the systematic erasure of the expelled Palestinians and their mini-holocaust from Israeli collective memory and the excision of their history and deeply rooted heritage in the land, and their destroyed villages and towns from Israeli official and popular history ... de-Arabisation of the land ... ‘toponymicide’: the erasure of ancient Palestinian place names and their replacement by newly coined Zionist Hebrew toponymy", p. 12 "the destruction of much of Palestinian society and the dispersal and fragmentation of the Palestinian people ... the crystallisation of a distinct and resistant Palestinian identity", p. 13 "the dispersal, disintegration and fragmentation of the Palestinian people ... a major division between the minority of Palestinians who remained inside Israel and the Palestinian refugees forced outside its borders"
 * Milshtein 2009 (in Litvak 2009), p. 47 "The 1948 war ... the central event in modern Palestinian history and the core around which the Palestinians’ national identity crystallized ... lost about 77 percent of the territory of Mandatory Palestine ... the destruction of 418 Palestinian settlements ... displacement ... fled or were deported ... a bipolar symbol of concurrent destruction and building ... severely shocked the Palestinians ... almost brought about their disappearance as a people ... also consolidate their fledgling national identity ... a tremendous and startling explosion that has ripped up a deeply rooted Palestinian society, away from its natural and harmonious historical course, and imposed on it a life of displacement or exile ... a national disaster ... accompanied by military defeat and loss of territory ... an unprecedented threat to their existence as a people, resulting in the dispersion of almost half the Palestinian population ... loss of hope for national sovereignty; destruction of the social, economic, political, and cultural fabric; and above all, with the fading and near disappearance of Palestinian national identity"
 * Ram 2009, pp. 366-367 "their society was destroyed ... expelled ... lost their country and the opportunity for statehood ... uprooted and went into exile ... turned into refugees ... villages were destroyed ... those of them who remained in the state were subjected to a military regime (though they received full formal citizenship). The Arab states annexed the rest of the territories of Palestine ... their national movement was extinct for decades"
 * Shlaim 2009, p. x "dispossession and dispersal ... became refugees. The name Palestine was wiped off the map ... not merely an injustice but a profound national trauma"
 * Webman 2009 (in Litvak 2009), p. 29 "the defeat, displacement, dispossession, exile, dependence, insecurity, lack of statehood, and fight for survival of the Palestinians"
 * Sa'di 2007, p. 3 "devastation of Palestinian society ... became refugees. Their fate hung on the decisions of politicians in the countries to which they fled or bureaucrats in international agencies. The minority of Palestinians ... who remained behind became nominal citizens of the newly established Jewish state, subject to a separate system of military administration by a government that also confiscated the bulk of their lands ... repressive regime of the Hashemites ... uncaring Egyptian administration ... military occupation ... A society disintegrated, a people dispersed, and a complex and historically changing but taken for granted communal life was ended violently", p. 8 "many things at once: the uprooting of people from their homeland, the destruction of the social fabric that bound them for so long, and the frustration of national aspirations ... a constant reminder of failings and of injustice.", p. 9 "mostly about fear, helplessness, violent uprooting, and humiliation. It embodies the unexpected and unstoppable destruction that left them in disarray, politically, economically, and psychologically ... the destruction in a single blow of all the worlds in which Palestinians had lived ... a new era dominated by estrangement, and often poverty"
 * Pappe 2006, p. 154 "not only houses or fields were destroyed in the Nakba but a whole community disappeared, with all its intricate social networks and cultural achievements"
 * Schulz 2003, p. 1 "immediate diasporisation of the Arab Palestinians ... a new ‘wandering identity’ and the Palestinians became a ‘refugee nation’ ... suffering caused by dispersal, exile, alienation and denial", p. 2 "root cause of the Palestinian diaspora", p. 24 "the flight and the fighting ... ‘root structure’ in the narrative of Palestinian identity ... forceful process ... suffering ... constitutive of a specific Palestinian identity ... birth of the Palestinian nation ... beginning of a story"
 * Sa'di 2002, p. 175 "changed their life beyond recognition ... dispersion [Shatat] ... turned into refugees ... among many other things, the loss of the homeland, the disintegration of society, the frustration of national aspirations, and the beginning of a hasty process of destruction of their culture"

Nakba definition full quotes

 * Sabbagh-Khoury 2023, p. 5 "But these lands became free only after the ethnic cleansing and eventual decimation of indigenous populations in North America and after the displacement of the peasants through aggressive land purchase in Palestine and the expulsion of the majority of the Palestinian population during the 1948 Nakba (Sabbagh-Khoury 2022d)."
 * Sabbagh-Khoury 2023, p. 122 "Moreover, it tends at best toward a partial discussion of the causes of the relatively swift collapse and disintegration of Palestinian society during the Nakba."
 * Abu-Laban 2022, p. 511 "The Nakba—Arabic for catastrophe—is the term used to capture the events of 1948 which led to over 80 per cent of the Palestinian population being violently forced to flee, and becoming stateless refugees in and outside historic Palestine. The Nakba is also a marker in what Abu-Luhod and Sa’di call ‘Palestinian time’.8 This is because in Palestinian collective memory ‘after 1948’ marks a dramatic disintegration of a society and a way of life."
 * Abu-Laban 2022, p. 512 "For Palestinians, occupation, land usurpation, displacement and being forced to live as refugees have continued from 1948 until present times. The Nakba has in effect been an ongoing continuity of trauma."
 * Manna 2022, p. 7 "The Nakba was like an earthquake that severed connections among the Palestinian people and caused the loss of a homeland where Palestinians had lived for centuries."
 * Sayigh 2022, p. 287 n.1 "The Nakba [‘catastrophe’] is the term Palestinians use to describe their expulsion by Zionist forces in 1947–9, with ‘Israel’ replacing ‘Palestine’ in official recognition, and the Palestinians dispersed among multiple ‘host’ countries."
 * Gutman 2021, p. 2 "The Jewish majority celebrates the country’s formative War of Independence or War of Liberation as a national holiday on, or close to, 5 Iyar in the Hebrew calendar (which corresponds to May 14 in 1948), while the Palestinians mourn their extensive loss and displacement in the 1948 war, which they term al-Nakba (the catastrophe, in Arabic), on May 15."
 * Gutman 2021, p. 4 "When Israelis celebrate the War of Independence as a miraculous victory against all odds that resulted in many casualties (1 percent of the population), Palestinians mark their loss in the 1948 war, which resulted in their massive displacement and dispossession, also known as al-Nakba."
 * Shenhav 2019, p. 61 "In recent years, historiography has abandoned the old question that sought to clarify how many Palestinians were expelled and how many of them fled on their own initiative or at the initiative of their leaders. This has been futile and removed from the center of historiography. Today many historians, Jews and Palestinians, provide a revisionist formulation in which the Nakba is not just the expulsion and displacement of 1948, but especially the ban on return to homes and families immediately after the war and in fact to this date. According to this interpretation, the sovereign decision of the Israeli government to prevent the return of hundreds of thousands of people to their homes after the war is a formal act of ethnic cleansing."
 * Wermenbol 2021, p. 4 n. 21 "The Nakba not only represents the loss of “the homeland,” but also “the disintegration of society, the frustration of national aspirations, and the beginning of a hasty process of destruction of Palestinian culture.” Ahmad H. Sa’di, “Catastrophe, Memory and Identity: Al-Nakbah as a Component of Palestinian Identity,” Israel Studies 7:2 (2002): 175."
 * Wermenbol 2021, p. 12 "For Palestinian-Israelis, the law not only constitutes an attempt to erase their past, but equally is, as Joint List leader and Hadash Chairman Ayman Odeh stated, “Point of proof that the Nakba – the erasure of Palestinians, along with our history, language and stories – is not a single historical event. It is a continuing phenomenon.”"
 * Slater 2020, p. 81 "However, the massacres and expulsions of the Palestinians—today widely known as the Nakba (the Catastrophe)—were an entirely different matter."
 * Khalidi 2020, p. 60 "WHAT HAPPENED IS, of course, now well known. By the summer of 1949, the Palestinian polity had been devastated and most of its society uprooted. Some 80 percent of the Arab population of the territory that at war’s end became the new state of Israel had been forced from their homes and lost their lands and property. At least 720,000 of the 1.3 million Palestinians were made refugees. Thanks to this violent transformation, Israel controlled 78 percent of the territory of former Mandatory Palestine, and now ruled over the 160,000 Palestinian Arabs who had been able to remain, barely one-fifth of the prewar Arab population. This seismic upheaval—the Nakba, or the Catastrophe, as Palestinians call it—grounded in the defeat of the Great Revolt in 1939 and willed by the Zionist state-in-waiting, was also caused by factors that were on vivid display in the story my father told me: foreign interference and fierce inter-Arab rivalries. These problems were compounded by intractable Palestinian internal differences that endured after the defeat of the revolt, and by the absence of modern Palestinian state institutions. The Nakba was only finally made possible, however, by massive global shifts during World War II."
 * Khalidi 2020, p. 76 "THE NAKBA REPRESENTED a watershed in the history of Palestine and the Middle East. It transformed most of Palestine from what it had been for well over a millennium—a majority Arab country—into a new state that had a substantial Jewish majority.40 This transformation was the result of two processes: the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Arab-inhabited areas of the country seized during the war; and the theft of Palestinian land and property left behind by the refugees as well as much of that owned by those Arabs who remained in Israel. There would have been no other way to achieve a Jewish majority, the explicit aim of political Zionism from its inception. Nor would it have been possible to dominate the country without the seizures of land."
 * Khalidi 2020, p. 82 "For these many reasons, in the bleak new reality after the Nakba, more than a million Palestinians faced a world turned utterly upside down. Wherever they were, whether inside Palestine or not, they experienced profound social disruption. For the majority, this meant destitution—the loss of homes, jobs, and deeply rooted communities. Villagers lost their land and livelihoods and urbanites their properties and capital, while the Nakba shattered the power of the country’s notables together with their economic base. The discredited mufti would never regain his prewar authority, nor would others of his class. Social upheavals in much of the Arab world, often triggered by military-backed revolutions, would replace the notable class with younger leaders drawn from more diverse social strata. The Nakba produced the same result among the Palestinians."
 * Khalidi 2020, p. 82 "For all Palestinians, no matter their different circumstances, the Nakba formed an enduring touchstone of identity, one that has lasted through several generations. It marked an abrupt collective disruption, a trauma that every Palestinian shares in one way or another, personally or through their parents or grandparents. At the same time as the Nakba provided a new focus for their collective identity, it broke up families and communities, dividing and dispersing Palestinians among multiple countries and distinct sovereignties. Even those still inside Palestine, whether refugees or not, were subject to three different political regimes: Israel, Egypt (for those in the Gaza Strip), and Jordan (for those on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem). This condition of dispersal, shitat in Arabic, has afflicted the Palestinian people ever since."
 * Khalidi 2020, pp. 88-89 "The few political formations such as trade unions and other non-elite groupings like the Istiqlal Party that had developed in Mandatory Palestine were irrevocably shattered by the Nakba. The only exception was the remnant of the Palestinian Communist Party, which before 1948 had a largely Arab membership and a mainly Jewish leadership.
 * Bashir 2018, Introduction "For the Palestinians, the Nakba is not merely about their defeat, their ethnic cleansing from Palestine,2 and the loss of their homeland, nor even about having become a people living predominantly as refugees outside their land and as a fragmented minority living under occupation in their own land. The Nakba also represents the destruction of hundreds of villages and urban neighborhoods, along with the cultural, economic, political, and social fabric of the Palestinian people. It is the violent and irreparable disruption of the modern development of Palestinian culture, society, and national consciousness.3 It is the ongoing colonization of Palestine that continues to the present through colonial practices and polices such as Jewish settlements, illegal land acquisition, imposing siege on Gaza, and the evacuation of villages.4"
 * Bashir 2018, Introduction "By contrast, most Palestinians live under largely miserable conditions of statelessness, occupation, fragmentation, rightlessness, and dispossession. Indicating the constitutive centrality of the Nakba in Palestinian politics, society, and collective memory, Ahmad H. Sa’di claims that the Nakba has become for the Palestinians what the French historian Pierre Nora called les lieux de memoire.32 The Nakba is an explicitly continuing present. Its consequences as well as the eliminatory colonial ideas and practices that informed it are still unfolding, being deployed, and affecting contemporary Palestinian life.33 Its aftermath of suffering and political weakness affects almost every Palestinian and Palestinian family, along with the Palestinian collective, on a near-daily basis.34"
 * Nashef 2018, p. 6 "To the Palestinians, the Nakba evokes a multitude of emotions, namely, defeat, displacement, dispossession, exile, insecurity, lack of statehood and the continual struggle for survival whether within the borders of historic Palestine or in the diaspora (Webman 29). Nakba can also indicate a fall into chaos, damage and complete destruction, as the descriptions associated with it are borrowed from the dictionary of natural disasters (Ghanim 27). The shared story of exile and pain, which began in 1948, began to reconstruct a collective identity for the Palestinians, gradually replacing old identities, such as family, religion, village or city (Webman 30)."
 * Nashef 2018, p. 6 "In the collective memory and narratives that followed 1948, Palestine was often remembered as the lost paradise, “stories of the sweetest grapes and figs, the most beautiful orange and lemon trees, the amazing seashores,” while the Nakba invokes the loss of the homeland and dignity (Hammer 50)."
 * Al-Hardan 2016, p. xi "One of the beginnings of the research project that underpins this book is in the Nakba, or catastrophe, that resulted from the establishment of the state of Israel on Palestine in May 1948. This catastrophe saw the dispossession of more than half of historic Palestine’s population, some 800,000 people, the overwhelming majority between March and October 1948. This annihilation of at least four-fifths of Palestinian society as it had once existed in the conquered territories, which unfolded from the end of 1947 to the beginning of 1949 and afterward, took place alongside the obliteration of at least 531 villages and eleven urban quarters (Pappe 2006a).1 Reclaiming and claiming history, Indigenous scholars have argued, is an essential part of decolonization (Smith 2012)."
 * Al-Hardan 2016, p. 2 "The Nakba, or catastrophe, is the Arabic word that Palestinians and Arabs more generally use to refer to the establishment of the state of Israel on Palestine in May 1948 and the resulting destruction and uprooting of the major part of Palestinian society (AbuLughod and Sa’di 2007)."
 * Rashed 2014, p. 18 "The fact that these Palestinians are Israeli citizens means that we could view these policies from a minority rights perspective, as the acts of a selectively ‘repressive’ government. This does not preclude individual victims experiencing this as genocidal. Indeed, if we take the view that the Nakba – including the ‘transfer’, denial, elimination and discrimination against Palestinians – is still taking place as part of a process of settler colonialism, the relevance to Genocide Studies cannot be ignored."
 * Lentin 2013, ch. 2 "Even though it is not the only act of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in modern history, the Nakba is unique in many ways, in that the dispossessed Palestinians, particularly those ‘internal refugees’ (Masalha 2005) who remained in Palestine, live side by side with those who expelled them, took over their lands and properties, reconceptualised them as ‘Israeli Arabs’, and continue to deprive them of their rights by the prohibition of land ownership on all but three per cent of publicly owned lands."
 * Lentin 2013, ch. 2 "Not unlike the Holocaust for Jewish people, which changed the condition of modernity, the Nakba is a foundational event for the Palestinians, a memory and a narrative standing for a series of catastrophic events whose influence continues to the present."
 * Sayigh 2013, p. 52 "The interview quoted above conveys the immensity of the Nakba and its continuation as an ongoing source of suffering for the Palestinian people. The Nakba is the historical circumstance which caused the displacement of the Palestinians, and continues today to disconnect them from their homeland, their communities, and their history. The loss of recognition of their rights to people- and state-hood created by the Nakba has led to an exceptional vulnerability to violence, as their desperate current situation in Syria shows."
 * Sayigh 2013, p. 55, "The Nakba of 1948 not only severed Palestinians’ connection with a territory named Palestine, but also with their history and identity."
 * Masalha 2012, p. 1 "1948 was the year of the Palestine Nakba (Catastrophe), the uprooting of the Palestinians and the dismemberment and de-Arabisation of historic Palestine. In the course of the 1948 war and immediate post-Nakba period the name ‘Palestine’ was wiped off the map. In 2012 Palestinians commemorate the 64th anniversary of the Nakba, which is a key date in Palestinian collective memory and the most traumatic event in the history of the Palestinian people. The rupture of 1948 and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine are central to both the Palestinian society of today and Palestinian social history and collective identity. Resisting ethnic cleansing and politicide has been a key feature of the modern history of the Palestinians as a people."
 * Masalha 2012, p. 10 "The work also, crucially, argues that the Palestine Nakba is an example of both ‘politicide’ and ‘cultural genocide’ (see below). The ethnic cleansing and politicide of 1948 were immediately followed by Nakba memoricide: the systematic erasure of the expelled Palestinians and their mini-holocaust from Israeli collective memory and the excision of their history and deeply rooted heritage in the land, and their destroyed villages and towns from Israeli official and popular history. One of the key tools of the de-Arabisation of the land has been ‘toponymicide’: the erasure of ancient Palestinian place names and their replacement by newly coined Zionist Hebrew toponymy."
 * Masalha 2012, p. 12 "The trauma of the Nakba affected Palestinian national identity in two contradictory ways. On the one hand the Nakba led to the destruction of much of Palestinian society and the dispersal and fragmentation of the Palestinian people. But, on the other hand, following the encounter with and rejection by neighbouring Arab states, the Nakba also led to the crystallisation of a distinct and resistant Palestinian identity (Litvak 2009: 103–11)."
 * Masalha 2012, p. 13 "The Nakba led to the dispersal, disintegration and fragmentation of the Palestinian people and to a major division between the minority of Palestinians who remained inside Israel and the Palestinian refugees forced outside its borders; today these are numbered in millions."
 * Milshtein 2009 (in Litvak 2009), p. 47 "The 1948 war—or the Nakba (the disaster, catastrophe) in Palestinian terminology—is the central event in modern Palestinian history and the core around which the Palestinians’ national identity crystallized.1 The Palestinians lost about 77 percent of the territory of Mandatory Palestine and witnessed the destruction of 418 Palestinian settlements2 and the displacement of 500,000 to 650,000 of their fellowmen, who fled or were deported.3 The Nakba embodies a bipolar symbol of concurrent destruction and building. It severely shocked the Palestinians and has, in their view, almost brought about their disappearance as a people. It did, however, also consolidate their fledgling national identity. The Palestinians describe the Nakba as a tremendous and startling explosion that has ripped up a deeply rooted Palestinian society, away from its natural and harmonious historical course, and imposed on it a life of displacement or exile. They view it as a national disaster, not only because it was accompanied by military defeat and loss of territory, but principally because it embodied an unprecedented threat to their existence as a people, resulting in the dispersion of almost half the Palestinian population. The Nakba also went hand in hand with loss of hope for national sovereignty; destruction of the social, economic, political, and cultural fabric; and above all, with the fad ing and near disappearance of Palestinian national identity."
 * Ram 2009, pp. 366-367 "What Jewish-Israelis label their “War of Independence” is called by the Palestinians “Al Nakba” – The Disaster.1 For the Jews in Israel, 1948 is the historical turning point in which their state was established and their sovereignty constituted. For the Palestinians, the opposite is the case: 1948 is the point at which their society was destroyed, a large part of them expelled, and they lost their country and the opportunity for statehood. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were uprooted and went into exile outside the boundaries of the state and turned into refugees in the surrounding states. Hundreds of their villages were destroyed and those of them who remained in the state were subjected to a military regime (though they received full formal citizenship). The Arab states annexed the rest of the territories of Palestine that had been allotted by the United Nations resolution 181 to the Palestinian Arab state and their national movement was extinct for decades (on the Palestinian history and Palestinian perspective see Sa’di and Abu-Lughod 2007; Farsoun and Aruri 2006)."
 * Shlaim 2009, p. x "As a result of the creation of Israel, the Palestinians suffered dispossession and dispersal. Over 700,000 Palestinians, roughly half of the indigenous Arab population, became refugees. The name Palestine was wiped off the map. This outcome of the war constituted not merely an injustice but a profound national trauma, a catastrophe or al-Nakba, as it is called in Arabic.
 * Webman 2009 (in Litvak 2009), p. 29 "The Nakba represented the defeat, displacement, dispossession, exile, dependence, insecurity, lack of statehood, and fight for survival of the Palestinians."
 * Sa'di 2007, p. 3 "The Nakba: The 1948 War that led to the creation of the State of Israel also resulted in the devastation of Palestinian society. At least 80 percent of the Palestinians who lived in the major part of Palestine upon which Israel was established—more than 77 percent of Palestine’s territory—became refugees.1 Their fate hung on the decisions of politicians in the countries to which they fled or bureaucrats in international agencies. The minority of Palestinians—anywhere from 60,000 to 156,000, depending on the sources—who remained behind became nominal citizens of the newly established Jewish state, subject to a separate system of military administration by a government that also confiscated the bulk of their lands. The Palestinians in the West Bank, whether refugees from other parts of Palestine or native to the area, came under the repressive regime of the Hashemites, the rulers of Jordan, while those residing in the Gaza Strip, bordering Egypt, came under an uncaring Egyptian administration. Then, in 1967, Israel brought both of these regions under military occupation (see Hadawi, 1967, 1988; I. Abu-Lughod, 1971; W. Khalidi, 1971; Said, 1979; Pappé, 2004). For Palestinians, the 1948 War led indeed to a “catastrophe.” A society disintegrated, a people dispersed, and a complex and historically changing but taken for granted communal life was ended violently. The Nakba has thus become, both in Palestinian memory and history, the demarcation line between two qualitatively opposing periods. After 1948, the lives of the Palestinians at the individual, community, and national level were dramatically and irreversibly changed."
 * Sa'di 2007, p. 8 "The Nakba was many things at once: the uprooting of people from their homeland, the destruction of the social fabric that bound them for so long, and the frustration of national aspirations. The Nakba could also be part of an unsettling counter-history: a constant reminder of failings and of injustice."
 * Sa'di 2007, p. 9 "For Palestinians, the Nakba was mostly about fear, helplessness, violent uprooting, and humiliation. It embodies the unexpected and unstoppable destruction that left them in disarray, politically, economically, and psychologically. If we agree with Nietzsche that every person’s or nation’s world consists of several worlds (Safranski 2002: 202), the Nakba meant the destruction in a single blow of all the worlds in which Palestinians had lived. For many, theirs was a dynamic, prosperous, and future-oriented society. The Nakba marked a new era dominated by estrangement, and often poverty. Nothing in their history or that of neighboring countries had prepared Palestinians to imagine such a catastrophe. The fact that the Nakba took place within a short period—a matter of months—made it hard to comprehend; there was little time to reflect."
 * Pappe 2006, p. 154 "As in other places in Palestine, it is worthwhile to dwell a little on the local history of the village as it demonstrates how not only houses or fields were destroyed in the Nakba but a whole community disappeared, with all its intricate social networks and cultural achievements."
 * Schulz 2003, p. 1 "One of the grim paradoxes of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is that the foundation of the state of Israel, intended to create a safe haven for the ‘archetypical’ Jewish diaspora, spelt the immediate diasporisation of the Arab Palestinians. The territorialisation of the Jewish diaspora spurred a new ‘wandering identity’ and the Palestinians became a ‘refugee nation’ (Siddiq 1995:87). To the Palestinians, the birth of Israel is thus remembered as the catastrophe, al-nakba, to imprint the suffering caused by dispersal, exile, alienation and denial."
 * Schulz 2003, p. 2 "The nakba is the root cause of the Palestinian diaspora."
 * Schulz 2003, p. 24 "As noted previously, the flight and the fighting are remembered as al-nakba, the catastrophe, a ‘root structure’ in the narrative of Palestinian identity. It is to this forceful process that the Palestinians trace their suffering, and the nakba is constitutive of a specific Palestinian identity. In narratives of identity the exodus is frequently given a ‘primordial’ quality. It is the birth of the Palestinian nation, it is the beginning of a story (R.Sayigh 1998)."
 * Sa'di 2002, p. 175 "THE 1948 WAR RESULTED IN Al-Nakbah-the immense catastrophe-for the Palestinian people and changed their life beyond recognition. First and foremost, Al-Nakbah engendered the dispersion [Shatat]. Between 77 and 83 percent of the Palestinians who lived in the part of Palestine that later became Israel-i.e., 78 percent of Mandatory Palestine-were turned into refugees. Thus, for Palestinians, Al-Nakbah represents, among many other things, the loss of the homeland, the disintegration of society, the frustration of national aspirations, and the beginning of a hasty process of destruction of their culture."

Discussion (Nakba definition)
I went through most of the (I don't have them all) and pulled quotes where they describe what "Nakba" is. (If anyone has sources to add to the core sources list, please do, and we can add quotes from those sources to this list.) The list above has like just key words and phrases;  is there to provide context of the key words and phrases.

Currently, this Wikipedia article says in the first sentence that the Nakba. I don't think that fully describes it, when looking at the quotes above. The "Components" section of this article says the Nakba. That strikes me as a fuller description, but I still don't think it really covers all of it. (Both sentences are sourced to Webman 2009 and Sa'di 2002, both quoted above.)

I don't have any better language to suggest right now, but I'm going to read over the short quotes list and let it marinate, and I'll post something if I think of something, and I invite you all to do the same. Levivich (talk) 03:50, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I did a sort of word cloud thing. Below is a list of the various words that use to describe Nakba, grouped by concept, and which core sources use which words.

For the full citations, see. For a list of all the words used by a particular source, see. For the context of the quotes that these are pulled from, see.

Displacement, etc.
 * displaced: Abu-Laban 2022, Gutman 2021, Shenhav 2019, Nashef 2018, Sayigh 2013, Milshtein 2009, Webman 2009
 * expelled: Sabbagh-Khoury 2023, Sayigh 2022, Shenhav 2019, Khalidi 2020, Slater 2020, Ram 2009
 * exiled: Nashef 2018, Ram 2009, Webman 2009, Schulz 2003
 * uprooted: Masalha 2012, Milshtein 2009, Ram 2009, Sa'di 2007
 * fled: Abu-Laban 2022, Milshtein 2009, Schulz 2003
 * dispersed: Sayigh 2022, Khalidi 2020, Masalha 2012, Milshtein 2009, Shlaim 2009, Sa'di 2007, Schulz 2003, Sa'di 2002
 * fragmented: Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Masalha 2012
 * severed: Manna 2022, Sayigh 2013
 * 'transfered': Rashed 2014
 * diasporisation: Schulz 2003

Violence, etc.
 * violence: Abu-Laban 2022, Slater 2020, Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Nashef 2018, Rashed 2014, Sayigh 2013, Webman 2009, Sa'di 2007, Schulz 2003
 * ethnic cleansing: Shenhav 2019, Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Lentin 2013, Masalha 2012, Milshtein 2009, Pappe 2006
 * destruction of cities/villages/fields: Bashir 2018, Al-Hardan 2016, Milshtein 2009, Ram 2009, Pappe 2006
 * pain/suffering: Nashef 2018, Bashir 2018, Schulz 2003
 * trauma: Abu-Laban 2022, Khalidi 2020, Masalha 2012, Shlaim 2009
 * fear and humiliation: Sa'di 2007

Political loss
 * lost national aspirations: Wermenbol 2021, Milshtein 2009, Sa'di 2007 and 2002, Bashir 2018, Ram 2009
 * statelessness: Abu-Laban 2022, Bashir 2018, Nashef 2018, Ram 2009, Webman 2009
 * political loss: Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Milshtein 2009
 * loss of rights: Bashir 2018, Sayigh 2013, Lentin 2013
 * loss of self-governance: Khalidi 2020, Ram 2009, Sa'di 2007

Dispossession, etc.
 * dispossession: Gutman 2021, Bashir 2018, Nashef 2018, Al-Hardan 2016, Lentin 2013, Shlaim 2009, Webman 2009
 * loss of land: Abu-Laban 2022, Khalidi 2020, Khalidi 2020, Khalidi 2020, Milshtein 2009, Ram 2009, Milshtein 2009
 * economic loss: Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Milshtein 2009

Loss of society: Sabbagh-Khoury 2023, Abu-Laban 2022, Wermenbol 2021, Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Al-Hardan 2016, Masalha 2012, Milshtein 2009, Ram 2009, Sa'di 2007, Pappe 2006, Sa'di 2002

Loss of culture: Wermenbol 2021, Bashir 2018, Milshtein 2009, Sa'di 2002

Loss of homeland: Manna 2022, Wermenbol 2021, Bashir 2018, Nashef 2018, Sa'di 2002

Became refugees: Abu-Laban 2022, Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Lentin 2013, Masalha 2012, Ram 2009, Shlaim 2009, Sa'di 2007, Schulz 2003, Sa'di 2002

From majority to minority: Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Sa'di 2007

Occupation: Abu-Laban 2022, Bashir 2018, Sa'di 2007

1948 defeat: Gutman 2021, Bashir 2018, Nashef 2018, Milshtein 2009, Webman 2009

Loss of name/identity: Sayigh 2022, Wermenbol 2021, Masalha 2012, Shlaim 2009, Milshtein 2009

Built/strengthened Palestinian identity: Khalidi 2020, Lentin 2013, Masalha 2012, Milshtein 2009, Schulz 2003

Other
 * denial: Rashed 2014, Schulz 2003
 * dependence: Webman 2009
 * helplessness: Sa'di 2007
 * discrimination: Rashed 2014
 * alienation: Schulz 2003

I still don't know how to sum that up in any kind of prose, but your thoughts on source selection, quote selection, organization, how to sum this up in a sentence or few, and any corrections, are all welcome. Levivich (talk) 21:54, 4 November 2023 (UTC)


 * What do we think of: ? I'm not loving "political rights and national aspirations" but "statelessness" doesn't cover it all IMO either, and I'm not sure what words to use. Levivich (talk) 17:58, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
 * That certainly seems like a more fulsome summary of the sources than the rather truncated statement that one currently finds at the top of the article. Hat tip, as always, to the methodical approach. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:21, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ Thanks, updated the article. Levivich (talk) 06:55, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
 * +1 for acknowledging the value of Levivich’s methodical approach to complex questions like this. Onceinawhile (talk) 08:18, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Could "Palestinian Arabs" rather than "Palestinians" be a more appropriate wording? Jewish and Arab residents were both referred to as Palestinians, under British rule, before Israel's 1948 establishment. The modern Palestinian national identity, exclusively referring to Arabs, did not develop until after 1948 and the Nakba. Neutral Editor 645 (talk) 23:13, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Questionable Wording
Under the "Nakba Denial" section the following can be found:

"In 2011, Israel enacted the Nakba Law which authorized the withdrawal of state funds from organizations that discuss the Nakba.[65] Israel also hosts grassroots movements, such as Zochrot, that have aimed to combat Nakba denial through direct memorial action.[65]"

The two sentences are attributed to the same source: [Kapshuk, Yoav; Strömbom, Lisa (November 2021). "Israeli Pre-Transitional Justice and the Nakba Law".]

Yet, the source does NOT support the implication (due to the wording: which may be innocently in error, or may be an attempt at propaganda/misrepresentation) in the 2nd sentence that the Israeli government encourages and supports the activities of Zochrot.

Rather, as the opening paragraphs of the Abstract, and Introduction, respectively, of the cited article say:

"Pre-transitional justice activities that expose past injustices during entrenched conflicts can incite strong reactions among actors who feel threatened by or dislike such activities, and who thus attempt to silence controversial truths."

AND

"In particular, we examine whether the Israeli so-called Nakba Law can be understood as a reaction to the pre-TJ actions of the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Zochrot, which works to expose Nakba narratives to the Jewish-Israeli public."

In short, without going too much deeper into this source, it is CLEARLY claiming the Nakba Law is an attempt to *suppress* the activities of Zochrot- NOT that the Israeli government is supportive of this NGO.

Thus, the wording of the section here must be changed- it (falsely) implies the Israeli government is both trying to suppress awareness of the Nakba narrative AND is supportive of ("hosting" in this sentence implies not just tolerance of, but actual support for) an NGO that is openly antagonistic towards the Israeli government's attempts to suppress the narrative.

The Israeli government, according to the only cited source for these sentences, is trying to suppress the Nakba narrative and is mutually antagonistic with Zochrot (which can be confirmed simply by viewing the web page for Zochrot: their articles repeatedly accuse Israel's current ruling coalition of an attempt at Ethnic Cleansing and of covering up what it repeatedly refers to as a 'settler-colonial' past). Thus, I suggest a wording that does not mislead:

"In 2011, Israel enacted the Nakba Law: which authorized the withdrawal of state funds from organizations that discuss the Nakba.[65] Some legal experts suggest Israel took this action in response to the activities of NGO's, such as Zochrot, that aimed to combat Nakba denial through direct memorial action.[65]"

Note the "have aimed" is also changed to "aimed" as the "have" is unnecessary and only makes the sentence harder to understand.

This wording is much clearer, and does not falsely create confusion by implying the unsubstantiated claim that the Israeli government has HELPED spread awareness of the Nakba narrative (aside from circuitous and disingenuous arguments that can be made about not banning the NGO from Israel entirely...)- a narrative it has consistently sought to suppress (as it accuses Israel of, essentially, being built on Ethnic Cleansing: a claim the current Israeli governing coalition denies). Supadubya (talk) 04:49, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Statelessness
According to the Mandatory Palestine article, residents of Palestine were not stateful. It is therefore incorrect to say Palestinians immediately became stateless. Moreover, are there additional references that Palestinians were not given citizenship in Egypt, Jordan, or Israel? Elminstersage (talk) 14:15, 14 October 2023 (UTC)


 * See Mandatory Palestine passport and Palestinian Citizenship Order 1925, among other related articles. Where in that article does it say "residents of Palestine were not stateful"? Please provide a quotation so it can be fixed if it is giving the wrong impression.
 * On your second point, which I am not sure I fully understand, see Casablanca Protocol.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 14:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

According to Statelessness, "a stateless person is someone who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law". According to Palestinian Citizenship Order 1925, "Palestinian citizens had the right of abode in Palestine, but were not British subjects, and were instead considered British protected persons.". Furthermore, in British Protected Person, "individuals who only hold BPP nationality are effectively stateless as they are not guaranteed the right to enter the country in which they are nationals." As such, Palestinians were always stateless. My original comment therefore stands in that the subject article should be changed to reflect that Palestinians did not immediately become stateless because they always were. It would, however, be accurate to add that they lost their British Protected Persons status and that the passports were deemed to be void (or some phrasing thereof). Elminstersage — Preceding undated comment added 21:22, 1 November 2023 (UTC)


 * This is original research and is therefore not valid for wikipedia. It is also nonsense. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:27, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

It is not nonsense. Extending beyond wikipedia articles though (from which all the above citations come), Immigration Advice Services says, "If you are a British protected person, you are effectively stateless." . Furthermore, Palestinians with a mandatory palestine passport were british protected persons Perhaps there is some minor amount of synthesis of these two ideas, but the logic is clear and the verifiable sources clearly indicate the Palestinians were British Protected Persons and therefore stateless. Elminstersage (talk) 13:03, 2 November 2023 (UTC)


 * You are confusing two concepts. One is about non-British people in Britain, the other is non-British people in Palestine. Both are not British citizens. That doesn’t mean the latter were not Palestinian citizens. For that you would need to understand how colonial and mandatory citizenships worked in practice. I strongly suggest you don’t waste your time and further though because I promise you this rabbit hole does not end where you currently think it does. Onceinawhile (talk) 17:25, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure why any wikipedian would discourage someone from learning more. Therefore, I would love your citations. As I see it, there is a difference between being a citizen and having statelessness. As noted in Mandatory Palestine passport, Palestine citizens were citizens who had the right of abode but were also British Protected Persons . In other words they were not "considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law" . The definitions are clear to me, so I'm not understanding how the operation of how it worked would change this, but would like to. Elminstersage (talk) 21:13, 3 December 2023 (UTC) Elminstersage (talk) 21:13, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The Palestine Citizenship Order in Council (1925) bestowed citizenship, not just right of residence, and it considered Palestine to be a state for that purpose. Palestine was a state for many other purposes too, for example it concluded treaties with other states independently of the UK. I've read a great deal about this issue and I have never seen Palestine citizens between 1925 and 1948 being considered stateless. Before 1924 things were less clear as the Ottoman Empire had not yet formally ceded sovereignty. Zerotalk 09:35, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Edit request: url parameter for Manna (2022) reference
I request this because right now the URL for the reference points to a Google Books page with a limited preview, while the publisher offers free access to the ebook version here.

The markup:

The above markup is identical to the current version except for the URL parameter, but I included in case it helps with convenience. – spida-tarbell ❀ (talk) (contribs) 01:00, 9 December 2023 (UTC)


 * ✅, free access is awesome, thank you for bringing this up! Levivich (talk) 06:52, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh wow, so fast -- thank you so much! – spida-tarbell ❀ (talk) (contribs) 23:02, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 14 December 2023
It is written that the Palestinians were displaced but the people who were displaced were Arabs and some of them became later Palestinians in the year 1989 when Palestine was formed, and the reason why it happened isn't in the text. נדב רשף (talk) 15:34, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Not done, Palestinians didnt magically become Palestinians in 1989.  nableezy  - 15:37, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

factual inaccuracy in the article.
The article states that Jews owned 7% of the land and Palestinians owned 90% of the land but that is untrue. private ownership by Palestinians was around the same as Jews, the rest was state land 147.235.214.184 (talk) 21:36, 14 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree. Also the cited article speaks about *privately owned land*, which is different than all the land. Most of the land in Israel was *publicly* owned. The wiki text should differ between private and public. Gelbard (talk) 03:01, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Agreed, there are maps on Wikipedia itself right now that provide the correct data. The current wording is inaccurate and portrays a completely different situation before the Nakba occurred. Hopefully will be corrected!
 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palestine_Index_to_Villages_and_Settlements,_showing_Land_in_Jewish_Possession_as_at_31.12.44.jpg#/media/File:Palestine_Index_to_Villages_and_Settlements,_showing_Land_in_Jewish_Possession_as_at_31.12.44.jpg
 * Taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine 70.27.128.229 (talk) 08:56, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I fixed part of this, but there is a separate calculation issue. Please see below. Mistamystery (talk) 19:55, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Casualties / Total Deaths of Palestinians
Does anyone have any information about the total number of Palestinians killed during the Nakba?

Some info I found here (of uncertain reliability): "According to the data documentation of www.palestineremembered.com, Israelis controlled 774 towns and villages during the Nakba. They destroyed 531 Palestinian towns and villages. Israeli forces atrocities also include more than 70 massacres against Palestinians killing 15,000 Palestinians during Nakba time." -Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/Portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/nakba%2060.pdf

IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 20:01, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Pre-1948 Private Land Ownership calculation issue
In the history section, it currently reads as follows:

"In 1947, in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, the United Nations partitioned Mandatory Palestine, leading to the 1948 Palestine war and the creation of the State of Israel. At the expiration of the Mandate, privately held lands amounted to approximately 25% of the total territory. Palestinian Arabs, who made up about two-thirds of the population, and owned about 90% of privately held lands, while Jews, who made up between a quarter and a third of the population, owned about 7% of the total territory."

90% of 25% privately held lands equals 22.5% of total Mandatory territory. 7% of total mandatory territory is equal to 25% of privately held lands.

There is no way that Palestinian Arabs owned 90% of privately held lands, while Jews owned 25% of that same category. Need more sources to clear this up. Mistamystery (talk) 20:00, 18 December 2023 (UTC)


 * The 7% figure is definitely total land and widely reported. But those sources don't all explain who exactly owned/possessed the other 93%. I assume it's Arabs -- who else? -- and it certainly was Arabs before the Mandate, but it's not entirely clear. Did Britain take ownership of previously-Arab-owned/possessed lands from the Ottoman Empire, or did previously-Arab-owned/possessed lands remain under Arab ownership/possession during the Mandate? I don't know.
 * As for the two sources cited for that phrase in the article, Abu-Laban and Bakan say "Arabs" (not Palestinian Arabs) "owned" 90% of "the land" (not "private"). But Manna says "Arabs of Palestine" "possessed" (not "owned") 90% of "privately-owned land" (so not total land). I'm not entirely sure if they are agreeing or disagreeing, or talking about the same thing. It's possible that Arabs (not just Palestinian Arabs) owned 90% of the total land, and also that Palestinian Arabs possessed 90% of the privately-owned land -- i.e., the two authors are talking about two different things. It's also possible that Abu-Laban and Bakan just meant that Palestinian Arabs owned or possessed 90% of privately-owned land, and they just weren't careful in their wording, i.e. the two authors are talking about the same thing and one of them is incorrect or inaccurate in their wording.
 * Here's another source (not used in this article) that was easy to pull because it's pullquoted in Mandatory Palestine:
 * Another huge wrinkle is the complexities of land ownership in Ottoman Palestine post-tanzimat, which involved legal methods of ownership and possession of land that was rather different from what is used in the West, e.g. tenants rights and so forth. Much of the land was technically owned by foreign (as in non-Palestinian) absentee landlords but inhabited, worked, possessed and controlled by local Palestinians, often for a very long time. That's too much too explain in this Wikipeida article, though there are other articles. (Although, I think the "arable farmland" point, which I've seen made by multiple sources in addition to Rogan above, should be added.)
 * More sources would certainly help resolve this. Alternatively, maybe it's better to just remove the 90% figure altogether, and just say the 7% figure. After all, for purposes of the Nakba, the "point" is that it went from 7% in 1947 to 78% by 1949. Levivich (talk) 20:36, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * There are plenty of counterfactuals or persistent misinterpretations that are considered by some to be the "point" of a public movement, message, or campaign. We don't need to give them the authority of unqualified restatement in wikpedia's voice.
 * If around 75% of land was owned by Britain, and this was handed over to the newly-formed Israeli state, it's natural that the latter would be 78% in 1949. It would definitely be misinformation to suggest that anything "went from" 7% to 78%; the combination of ("land privately held by Jewish Palestinians" + "state-held land in Mandatory Palestine") was around 80% in 1947, and ("land privately held by Jewish Israelis" + "state-held land in the new state of Israel") was around 80% in 1949. To be any more precise calls for a non-pointy source that uses consistent methodology to trace land ownership across the transition. – SJ +  04:35, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not aware of any source that says Britain handed over to Israel 75% of the land. I've seen many sources point out that the UN Partition plan allotted 55% to Israel and Israel took more than was allotted (taking half of the 45% that was allotted to Palestinians). I've seen almost every source I've read about Nakba point out that Jewish land ownership went from 7% or thereabouts before 1948 to 78% after 1948. Many of those sources are cited in the article. (The 90% figure, however, seems to be much more rare.) Levivich (talk) 05:47, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Culprits of massacres should be specified
In Nakba the sentence "Some two thousand Palestinians were massacred at the Siege of Tel al-Zaatar in 1976, during the Lebanese Civil War." suggests that Israelis massacred them, as the massacre is listed in the context of smaller-scale Israeli massacres, while this one was committed without Israeli involvement.

I don't think mentioning Lebanese civil war is enough to not be weasel-wordy, and the culprit should be explicitly specified. The same with later Sabra and Shatila massacres (in the next section), though Israelis did support the Lebanese militia which committed those massacres, which could be mentioned. Alternative is to explicitly define Nakba as mistreatment of Palestinians by both Israel/Zionists and Arab countries/factions, but I don't think this is the common usage and the edits I'm suggesting are far less drastic. Polystratus (talk) 19:06, 22 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I made an edit addressing the Tel al-Zaatar massacre's responsibility. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 22:03, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Seemingly contradictory figures, more accurate to say around 80% than half population expelled or fled Israel proper.
The introduction states: 'In the initial Nakba of 1948, approximately 700,000 Palestinian Arabs (about half of the region's Arab population) were expelled or fled from their homes in what is now Israel proper'. The 'about half' proportion is not well referenced.

Later in the article, under the heading 1948, it states: 'Approximately 750,000 Palestinians--over 80% of the population in what would become Israel--were expelled or fled from their homes and became refugees in neighboring states.' - This is very well referenced.

Most respected sources agree that over 700,000 Arabs were expelled, or fled due to the risk of being killed, with many estimating substantially more, so it would be better to say 'over 700,000' than 'approximately 700,000'.

The Arab population of historic Palestine in 1947 was 1,181,000 according to Demographic history of Palestine (region), but that includes the West Bank and Gaza, which were not subject to the Nakba. The relevant territory is the territory from which Arabs were expelled, which was mostly the territory that became so-called "Israel proper" (historical Palestine minus Gaza and the West Bank), the Israeli side of the 1949 Armistice Agreement / Green Line, so about 80%, perhaps 'over 80%' would be right, and 'about half' would be a gross understatement of the proportion of Arabs who 'were expelled or fled from their homes in what is now Israel proper'.

MathewMunro (talk) 17:30, 23 December 2023 (UTC)


 * When I added the body section I didn't update the lead to match, which is something that I think should be done. Based on the sources cited in the body, I think both "750k" and "over 80%" are widely cited figures. Levivich (talk) 18:35, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 24 December 2023
Add in that Israel department systematically removes evidence of the Nakba from their own archives to hide the proof of the Nakba.

Add "Since the early 2010s, the Israeli Defense Ministry teams have been reported to have been systematically removing "troves of historical documents", with the purpose to hide away proof of the Nakba."

Supporting source, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2019-07-05/ty-article-magazine/.premium/how-israel-systematically-hides-evidence-of-1948-expulsion-of-arabs/0000017f-f303-d487-abff-f3ff69de0000#!/ 49.186.88.211 (talk) 00:38, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template.  Spintendo  04:24, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Quite arbitrary timeline sections.
The timeline sections are currently:


 * Prior to 1948
 * 1948
 * 1949–1966
 * 1967–present

Firstly, I think it needs to be acknowledged that there is a difference of opinion on the time-span that the Nakba covers, with some, such as the author of this (https://www.un.org/unispal/about-the-nakba/) UN article apparently seeing it as primarily a 1948 thing, calling it the 'tragic events of 1948', while and others, for example, an Al Jazeera writer here (https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/5/23/the-nakba-did-not-start-or-end-in-1948) referred to it as ongoing.

In elaborating the view that the Nakba is ongoing, I suggest the following timeline sections:

I think the first timeline section should cover the period before the 29 Nov 1947 UN partition vote. This should cover in outline depth the loss of Arab control over Palestine in WW1, the loss of control over Jewish migration, the brutal suppression of the Arab Revolt (see 'The Suppression of the Great Revolt and the Destruction of Everyday Life in Palestine', Charles W. Anderson, https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1643031).

The second timeline section should cover the period from the partition vote up to the 14 May 1948 withdrawal of the British occupation forces, as there was a major increase in Israeli terrorist atrocities in that period, including indiscriminate murder, maiming, assault, robbery & arson (refer to The Encyclopaedia of the Palestine Problem, by Issa Nakhleh, chapter 6, quoting War Office file 275/109, Public Record Office, London, and Hansard, House of Commons Debates). Also please reference the British failure to effectively suppress Israeli terrorist gangs or the importation of weapons by Jewish terrorists or domestic weapons manufacturing (see https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-haganah), and even a report from 19 Jan 1948 of a $20,000,000 offer of UK military surplus to the Jewish Agency here (http://pdfs.jta.org/1948/1948-01-21_017.pdf, second page)

The third timeline section should cover the period of the Arab intervention from 14 May 1948 to 20 Jul 1949 when all parties had signed Armistice agreements.

A fourth section should cover the inter-war period, or this could be added to one of the adjacent sections. This section should mention that half to two-thirds of Arab land was seized, Arab animal herds were seized, Arab crops were sprayed with herbicide by Israel, and 'approximately 30% of the 150,000 Palestinians remaining in Israel were expelled from their homes becoming internally displaced refugees.' (https://web.archive.org/web/20220629182724/http://www.itisapartheid.org/facts01.html)

A fifth section should cover the 1967 war and the Israeli annexation, occupation and domination of the West Bank and Gaza.

A sixth section could cover the prelude to the first intifada, starting with the 1977 electoral victory of the right-wing Likud party, and mentioning the 'increasing Israeli repression in response to heightened Palestinian protests following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982' (https://www.britannica.com/topic/intifada). Alternatively, it could be prepended to a section on the first intifada.

A seventh section should cover the 1987-1993 first intifada and the signing of the Oslo Accords.

An eighth section should cover the second intifada, which went from Likud leader Ariel Sharon's 28 Sep 2000 domination tour of the al-Aqsa mosque to the 8 Feb 2005 Sharm El Sheikh Summit in which then PM Sharon agreed to release 900 Palestinian prisoners and withdraw from some West Bank towns that Israel had occupied during the uprising. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada)

A ninth section should cover the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza commencing in force on 15 Aug 2005, and completed by 12 Sep 2005 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaza). And the accompanying sabotage of the Gazan economy, including the destruction of greenhouses by settlers before they left, the 8 Dec 2005 threats/decisions to suspend planned approval of bus and truck convoys between Gaza and the West Bank, and the 15 Jan 2006 decision to close the Karni crossing – the sole point for exports of goods from Gaza. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip)

A tenth section, possibly appended to the previous section should cover the electoral victory of Hamas and the aftermath:
 * 25 Jan 2006 electoral victory of Hamas.
 * 29 Jan 2006 decision to stop transferring to the PA customs duties and taxes that Israel had collected on their behalf.
 * 17 Feb 2006 Fatah, on its last day in office, returned $50 million of US aid that was intended for infrastructure projects in Gaza.
 * 29 Mar 2006 decision of both the US and EU cut aid to the Palestinian Authority.
 * 8 Jun 2006 Israel resumed its policy of the extrajudicial killing of key Hamas leaders, with the IDF assassination of Jamal Abu Samhadana. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MathewMunro (talk • contribs) 12:05, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * 25 Jun 2006 kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
 * 28 Jun 2006 Israeli airstrikes on Gazan civilian infrastructure.
 * 29 Jun 2006 Israeli coup d'état in the West Bank, including the kidnapping of 49 senior Hamas officials, who were mostly 'moderate members [of the Palestinian Legislative Council] from the West Bank who had been calling on the Gaza leadership to recognise Israel'. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_election#Aftermath)

An eleventh section should cover the right to return marches, the thousands of Palestinians maimed or permanently disabled by Israeli snipers, and hundreds of Palestinians killed, and the intensification and increasingly overt nature of Israeli apartheid (for example, the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, and the flood of statements from human rights organisations calling Israel an apartheid state) and the increasing settler terrorism.

And a final section (for now) covering the Oct-7 revenge attacks and Israel's genocidal response.

MathewMunro (talk) 18:14, 23 December 2023 (UTC)