1947–1949 CE · partition proposal, civil war, statehood, regional war and displacement · Middle East · War

1948 war, Palestinian displacement and the making of Israel

The UN General Assembly recommended partition in 1947; civil war followed, Israel declared statehood as the British Mandate ended in May 1948, and neighbouring Arab states entered the war. More than 700,000 Palestinians were displaced or expelled in the Nakba.

Atlas dossier · Cold War & Decolonization

Free device narration · synchronized English captions · transcript available

Why it matters

The 1949 armistices did not create a Palestinian state or resolve refugees, borders, Jerusalem, security or sovereignty. The dossier distinguishes documented sequence from later national memory without treating unequal losses as interchangeable.

Date: 1947–1949 CE · partition proposal, civil war, statehood, regional war and displacement
Historical setting: Cold War & Decolonization · Middle East
People & communities: Palestinian civilians · Jewish communities · Israeli forces · Arab states · UN officials · refugees

Proposal, civil war and interstate war were stages

General Assembly Resolution 181 recommended partition in November 1947 but did not itself create two states. Fighting within Mandate Palestine followed; Israel declared independence as Britain withdrew in May 1948, and neighbouring Arab armies entered the war. The 1949 armistices ended that phase without producing a final peace settlement.

United Nations: Question of Palestine history ↗

The Nakba was mass displacement

More than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled and hundreds of communities were depopulated during the war. The causes and sequence varied locally, but displacement and prevention of return cannot be reduced to voluntary flight. Jewish statehood and refuge after persecution are part of the history without cancelling Palestinian loss or statelessness.

Academic research on 1948, Israel and Palestinian displacement ↗

Illustrated sequence

A visual presentation accompanying this entry. Read each image’s attribution to distinguish archival records, later depictions and reconstructions.

IMAGE 1

Legacy visual — rights review open

A 1948 photograph credited to Fred Csasznik, reproduced in later publications about Palestinian displacement.

Palestinian refugees 1948.jpg — Fred Csasznik; Source lists Public domain; via Wikimedia Commons; historical image credited in Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Resized, cropped and converted to WebP for Atlas display.

Source and reuse terms ↗

Supplemental archival visual

A documented journey of displacement

A 1948 UNRWA photograph of Palestinian refugees initially displaced to Beach camp in Gaza boarding boats bound for Lebanon or Egypt. The record documents one route within a much wider displacement.

Open the item page and rights record ↗Hrant Nakashian / UNRWA, 1948. CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO; permission recorded by Wikimedia VRT ticket 2025060410006591. Resized and converted to WebP for Atlas display.

Palestinian refugees boarding boats from Gaza, 1948 — UNRWA record · CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Interpretation note

Evidence, memory and historical debate

This dossier distinguishes the event’s basic chronology from later arguments about meaning, responsibility and legacy. When comparing religious, national, Indigenous or scholarly interpretations, consult the primary and institutional sources above alongside peer-reviewed historical work.

Elsewhere in the world

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