Palestinian refugees from 1948
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 4.9 million (Registered with UNRWA—including descendants and re-settled) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Gaza Strip, Jordan, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria | |
| Languages | |
| Arabic | |
| Religion | |
| Islam and Christianity |
The 1948 Palestinian exodus, also known as the Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, "al-Nakbah", literally "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"), occurred when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Palestine war. Between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were sacked during the war, while urban Palestine was almost entirely extinguished. The term "nakba" also refers to the period of war itself and events affecting Palestinians from December 1947 to January 1949.
The precise number of refugees, many of whom settled in refugee camps in neighboring states, is a matter of dispute but around 80 percent of the Arab inhabitants of what became Israel (50 percent of the Arab total of Mandatory Palestine) left or were expelled from their homes. Approximately 250,000-300,000 Palestinians had fled or been expelled prior to the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948; a fact which was named as a causus belli for the entry of the Arab League into the country, sparking the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
The causes are also a subject of fundamental disagreement between historians. Factors involved in the exodus include Jewish military advances, destruction of Arab villages, psychological warfare and fears of another massacre by Zionist militias after the Deir Yassin massacre, which caused many to leave out of panic; direct expulsion orders by Israeli authorities; the voluntary self-removal of the wealthier classes; collapse in Palestinian leadership and Arab evacuation orders. and an unwillingness to live under Jewish control.
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