A On May 15, as has been done for decades, Palestinian Arabs, their supporters and Israel detractors observed the “Nakba” or the catastrophe of Israel’s birth in 1948. In order to understand the veracity of that narrative and how it’s been conflated in modern dialogue and reporting, it’s important to understand what lies behind that. This is Part Three of a Six Part series.
Jonathan Feldstein
The Term and Its Meaning
The word “Nakba” is Arabic for “catastrophe.” For Palestinians and their supporters who have become conflated with and indistinguishable from Israel detractors, it marks the displacement of roughly 700,000 Arabs during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the evacuation and destruction of villages, and the broader loss of land following the Arab rejection of a two-state solution, and war that five Arab states launched against the fledgling Jewish state. It claims that Arabs were “expelled” where the historic truth shows that many fled of their own volition, urged by the Arab leaders at the time to do so. The “Nakba” has become the cornerstone of Palestinian national identity. Rather than being rooted in a Declaration of Independence, it gave birth to their declaration of resistance.
A historically grounded view identifies the Nakba narrative as a strategic construct that reframes a failed war of annihilation against the Jewish state as an original sin, with the “catastrophe” defined not by specific wartime events but by Israel’s very existence. That framing is evident in Nakba commemorations today, which feature maps without Israel, slogans denying Jewish history and legitimacy in Israel, and demands incompatible with a two-state resolution.
The War That Caused the Displacement
In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition British Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state under Resolution 181. The 1917 Balfour Declaration had already affirmed the goal of establishing a Jewish homeland in the territory. The Jewish leadership, in the wake of the Holocaust and centuries of persecution, accepted a further compromise with the partitioning of the remaining 22 percent of the land that had already been partitioned in the creating of Jordan, and prepared for statehood. Arab leaders including Jordan, which was only created two decades earlier, rejected the partition outright, demanding all of Mandatory Palestine, and launched increased violence against Jewish communities immediately after the November 1947 vote.
By May 1948, when Israel declared independence, five Arab armies invaded. The war resulted in Jewish victory against overwhelming odds, armistice lines, and a major refugee crisis on both sides. Approximately 700,000 Arabs fled or were displaced amid the fighting. Many left in response to Arab leaders’ calls to clear the way for invading armies, in the expectation that once Jewish communities were defeated, those who had fled would return and inherit their properties. Other Arabs were displaced by Israeli forces securing strategic territory. Arab radio broadcasts urging evacuation, which the Nakba narrative largely erases, are well documented.
The Jewish Refugee Crisis That Is Never Acknowledged
During the same period, roughly 800,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries. Many resettled in Israel. The contrast in how the two refugee crises were handled is stark and revealing. Israel absorbed Jewish refugees, integrated them as citizens, and built a state. Arab states largely kept “Palestinians” in refugee camps as political pawns, denied them citizenship, and in many cases discriminated against them socially and economically. This was not an accident. It was a policy.
The United Nations, through its agency UNRWA, then conferred refugee status not only on those who had fled – regardless of the reason – but on every generation of their descendants, indefinitely. UNRWA is the only UN refugee agency in history dedicated to a single national or ethnic group, and the only one whose mandate is to perpetuate rather than resolve a refugee crisis. Refugee status is inherited regardless of where descendants live or what citizenship they hold, an arrangement that exists nowhere else and with no other ethnic group in the world.
Cause and Effect
The Nakba narrative inverts cause and effect. The war began with Arab refusal to accept any compromise vis a vis the creation of a Jewish state, and the invasion of it by five armies. The displacement of Arabs was a consequence of that war, not its goal. Israel’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, explicitly called on Arab residents to remain and build the country together. That call is well documented, yet absent from “Nakba” discourse.
The Arab population of Mandatory Palestine also included a substantial proportion of relatively recent migrants. Records document that the Arab population roughly doubled between 1920 and 1948, a rate of growth that far outpaced global averages and is statistically inexplicable without large-scale immigration. Estimates suggest that 30 to 50 percent of the Arab population in Palestine by 1948 were migrants from Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and elsewhere, drawn by the economic growth generated by Jewish immigration and development. Conferring refugee status and claiming indigenous roots on this mixed population, across five generations, contorts the concept of refugee beyond recognition.
True peace requires accepting Israel’s legitimacy as the nation-state of the Jewish people, with secure borders. Demands for the “right of return” of millions of descendants to properties their ancestors left nearly 80 years ago are not a path to coexistence alongside Israel. They are a mechanism for erasing it.
Jonathan Feldstein has consented no1abba@gmail.com but he wants the following author bio
Jonathan Feldstein is president of the Genesis 123 Foundation (www,genesis123.co) whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians and Christians with Israel. He was born and educated in the U.S. and immigrated to Israel in 2004. He is married and the father of six, and grandfather of four (so far).
Two sons and a son in law are currently serving in the IDF and have been involved in combat in Gaza and Lebanon since the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre in Israel.
Jonathan is a leader working with and among Christian supporters of Israel, and shares experiences of living as an Orthodox Jew in Israel through his work, writing, and as host of the Inspiration from Zion podcast. Since the war began, he has authored more than 150 articles, and participated in a similar number of interviews, briefings, prayer events, and more.
Jonathan is working with Christian leaders all over the world to realize a true peace in Gaza, details of which can be found at www.SolutionforPeaceinGaza.com.
In 2023 he published the highly acclaimed book, Israel the Miracle (www.israelthemiracle.com), which makes a great gift for Chanukah and Christmas, and year round.
They call it Paliwood.