BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee

In September 1947, the UN
Special Committee on Palestine
issued its recommendations on
the future status of the country. 27
The majority of the Committee
members supported the creation
of two states, one Arab and the
other Jewish, “to afford a workable
basis for meeting in part the claims
and national aspirations of both
parties.” Others favoured a federal
state to “ensure equal rights for both
Arabs and Jews in their common
state.”
UN General Assembly Resolution
181(II), of 29 November 1947,
recommended the partition
of Palestine. 28 This Resolution
proposed two states, one Arab and
one Jewish, in which all persons
were to be guaranteed equal rights. 29
From the Nakba to the Present Day – Ongoing Displacement
The proposed Jewish state was allotted 56% of the land, even though the Jewish community comprised less than onethird
of the population of Palestine at the time and owned no more than 7% of the land. 30 The dispersal of the Arab
and Jewish populations in the country meant that nearly half the population of the proposed Jewish state consisted of
Palestinian Arabs, who owned nearly 90% of the land. 31
By the time the British had decided to turn the question of Palestine over to the United Nations in 1947, an estimated
100–150,000 Palestinian Arabs had been displaced within or from their homeland. 32 By this time, Zionist colonization
associations had acquired more than 700 km 2 of land, mostly from larger landowners not resident in Palestine. 33
1.3 The Nakba
Palestinian students protesting UN partition plan, 12 March 1947. © Orient House Archives.
The UN recommendation to partition Palestine set off a series of events that led to the mass displacement of
Palestinians from their homeland. Approximately half of the Palestinian population (estimated at 1.3 million) 34 was
displaced between the end of 1947 and early 1949. Half of these were displaced before 15 May 1948, when the first
Arab-Israeli war began. Israel took control of refugee homes, properties and lands. Palestinians refer to this period
as the Nakba, or Catastrophe.
The greatest outflow of refugees before the war took place during April and early May 1948 as a result of the Zionist military
operation known as “Plan Dalet”, which was designed “to achieve the military fait accompli upon which the state of Israel
was to be based.” 35 The massacre of more than 100 men, women and children in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin in
April 1948 is widely acknowledged to have contributed to the fear and panic that led to the mass displacement. 36
The unilateral declaration of the establishment of the state of Israel by the Zionist movement, in Tel Aviv on 14
May 1948, coincided with the withdrawal of British forces from Palestine and led to the collapse of the UN plan
to divide Palestine into two states. The subsequent entry of Arab forces into Palestine set off the first Israeli-Arab
war. Palestinians fled their homes as a result of attacks on civilians by Israeli forces, massacres, looting, destruction
of property and other atrocities. Others were forcibly expelled.
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