Скачать или смотреть What was the Nakba?

In 1948 most Palestinian families were farmers, tradesmen and townspeople.

They didn’t start a war. They didn’t threaten anyone. They simply woke up in the wrong place at the wrong moment in history, and the world changed around them.

Early Zionist leaders promised something very different from what actually followed.
In the late nineteenth century, figures like Herzl talked about a homeland built through legal purchase, coexistence, and international agreement.

Even the Balfour Declaration stated that nothing should ever “prejudice the civil and religious rights” of the people already living there.

But when the British left and the UN partition plan collapsed into war, the reality was nothing like the promises.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced in the chaos of 1947–49.

Some fled fighting, some were forced out by military operations, and many never returned. That period is remembered as the Nakba “the catastrophe” because entire towns, villages, and communities simply disappeared.

Military rule over Palestinians lasted for years after the state was created. The borders shifted again in 1967. New populations moved in, old populations were restricted, and a conflict that was meant to be temporary became a permanent feature of life for millions of people.

Further reading:
Benny Morris - 1948: A History of the First Arab–Israeli War
Rashid Khalidi - The Iron Cage