The adoption of the UN Partition Plan for Palestine on November 29, 1947 at the UN General Assembly was immediately followed by the outbreak of civil war between the Jewish and Arab communities in Palestine, which marked the beginning of the first phase of the 1948 War. (The war’s second phase began with the establishment of the state of Israel and was a conventional conflict between it and invading Arab states.) In itself, this civil war can be divided into two stages. The first stage was characterized by an Arab offensive with Jews on the defensive, while the second stage was marked by a Jewish offensive led by the Jewish defense forces, the Hagana. The fighting resulted in substantial Jewish territorial gains from April to mid-May 1948.
The first casualties of the civil war occurred on November 30, when an armed Arab band ambushed a bus with Jewish passengers, killing seven. In the days that followed, similar attacks were carried out against Jewish buses in Jerusalem and Haifa. In reprisal, Zionist paramilitary organizations, the dissident right-wing Irgun ****and Lehi, attacked Arab workers in Haifa. The fighting in the first days established a pattern that was seen in following months: small scale attacks and counterattacks as well as ambushes along the roads. With the start of the hostilities, Arab families mainly in mixed towns and some villages began to abandon their homes, thus marking the beginning of the refugee problem.
Against the background of continuing Arab successes on the battlefield and what soon turned into the war for the main roads of Palestine, Jewish forces adopted a new offensive strategy. This became increasingly urgent in March 1948 when it became apparent that that the international community might backpedal on partition in favor of a UN trusteeship on Palestine as a result of continued Arab resistance. In April 1948, the Hagana began the implementation of “Plan D.” In its broadest terms, Plan D called for securing all the territory earmarked by the UN for the Jewish state as well as areas like West Jerusalem and Western Galilee with substantial Jewish populations. The preamble dispatched to the brigades stated the aim of Plan D in the following terms: “to take control of the territory of the Jewish State and to defend its borders, as well as [defend] the blocs of settlement and the Jewish population outside these borders against a regular enemy, semi regular[s], and irregulars” (1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. Yale University Press, 2008: p. 119). Plan D opened the way for the conquest of Arab villages, although the decision on the fate of each village and its residents was ultimately vested in brigade commanders.
At this stage, one of the most controversial events of the 1948 War—the Deir Yassin massacre—took place. Deir Yassin was a Palestinian Arab village near Jerusalem with a population of around 600 people. On April 9, 1948, Irgun and Lehi conducted an attack on the village killing 100–120 of its inhabitants. The rest of the villagers were driven out, while some fled. The media campaign that raged both in Palestine and the Arab world produced the unintended result of sparking fear and panic among the Palestinians, resulting in further flight from Arab villages and towns. Deir Yassin was one of the turning points in the Palestinian refugee problem during the 1948 War.
Despite their superiority in numbers (1.2 to 1.3 million Palestinian Arabs and 630,000 Jews), the Palestinian Arabs suffered from a number of disadvantages that contributed to further Palestinian flight and eventual defeat in the war. The Yishuv enjoyed far greater military power in terms of both manpower and weaponry, economic independence, national institutions and a highly organized and motivated society. Palestinian Arab society, on the other hand, was deeply divided along family and religious lines, economically weak and without an effective leadership that could lead a push for statehood.
The Israelis sustained very heavy losses. Some 6,000 men and women, one percent of the entire population, were killed in the war. The Palestinians suffered similar losses; although more difficult to ascertain precisely, it is estimated that some 8000 Palestinians were killed in the fighting. On the Palestinian side, some 700,000 people (or just over half their entire population) fled or were forced inland or out of the country altogether by Israeli forces (see Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999, p. 252). Cases of expulsion took place especially after the invasion of Palestine by the regular armies of the neighboring Arab states in the second phase of the war that began in May 1948 with Israel’s declaration of independence. In some instances Arab refugees evacuated their homes on the orders of various Arab leaders and commanders. It would be fair to say that the Palestinian refugee problem was created as a result of the combination of Palestinian societal collapse and flight as well as expulsion.
Benny Morris, one of the “new” Israeli historians (see below), and unquestionably the leading authority on the origins of the refugee problem has summed up the complexity of the issue as follows:
The first Arab-Israeli war, of 1948, was launched by the Palestinian Arabs, who rejected the UN partition resolution and embarked on hostilities aimed at preventing the birth of Israel. That war, and not design, Jewish or Arab, gave birth to the Palestinian refugee problem. But the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from the areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish state was inherent in Zionist ideology…. [Even so] there was no pre-war Zionist plan to expel “the Arabs” from Palestine or the areas of the emergent Jewish State; and the Yishuv [the Jewish community in Palestine] did not enter the war with a plan or policy of expulsion. (Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press, 2004. p. 588.)
During the negotiations between Israel and the Arab states after the 1948 War, Israel offered to allow the return of 100,000 Palestinian refugees to Israel on the condition that the Arab states make full peace with Israel and settle the rest of the refugees in their own countries. This offer was rejected by the Arab states and since then has not been proposed again by Israel.
The war of 1948 was a seminal event for both the Israelis and the Palestinians. Therefore, the ensuing historiographical debate on the issue has been equally intense. Points of contention include historical responsibility for the events, the refugee question and the terminology describing the war. The Palestinians call 1948 al-Nakba (the disaster, the catastrophe), while the Israelis use terms such as the War of Liberation (Milhemet Hashihrur) and the War of Independence (Milhemet Ha’aztma’ut).
Beginning in the late 1980s, a group of Israeli historians began publishing a series of books and articles about the War of 1948 in which they used hitherto unavailable Israeli and Western sources. These “New Historians,” as they became known, offered a new more critical perspective and interpretation of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as Zionism (see references). There has been some self-criticism on the side of the Arabs as well. Most notably, Syrian-born philosopher Sadiq al-‘Azm criticized the use of the term al-Nakba arguing that simply the use of the expression, which means a natural catastrophe in Arabic, is an apologetic refusal of the Palestinians to accept any responsibility for the events of 1948.
As a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, more than 700,000 Palestinians were forced to relocate to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and surrounding Arab countries. In December 1949, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established and tasked with registering and assisting the Palestinian refugees. In the absence of a solution to the refugee problem, the mandate of UNRWA has been extended each year.
UNRWA has provided health care, education and social services to Palestinian refugees living in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and has administered refugee camps in these territories. Over the years, Palestinian refugee camps have developed into urban neighborhoods, in which the living conditions are generally poor, due to the high population density and the lack of infrastructure, hygiene and public services.
In 2016, UNRWA reported that 1.31 million registered Palestinian refugees lived in the Gaza strip, while the West Bank is home to more than 790,000 refugees. One quarter of these live in the West Bank's nineteen refugee camps, the largest of which is Balata, near the city of Nablus. The majority of the registered refugees, however, live in various towns and villages of the West Bank. As for Gaza, less than half of the refugees live in the eight camps designated by UNRWA.
UNRWA defines a Palestinian refugee as a person “whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period June 1, 1946 to May 15, 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” Of particular significance is the fact that refugee status is also extended to descendants of this group. Hence, under UNRWA criteria, Palestinians “inherit” their refugee status from their parents, regardless of where they were born. As a result, the number of Palestinian refugees eligible for services under UNRWA has grown from 700,000 in 1949 to approximately five million.
The UNRWA definition of Palestinian refugees is unique and does not appear to comport with the 1951 Refugee Convention. It is argued that the inheritance of the refugee status has played an important part in perpetuating the sense of displacement among generations of Palestinians. At the same time, however, the loss of homeland, displacement and refugee status are now at the very core of Palestinian national identity. Therefore, the Palestinian refugee issue and its emphasis on Palestinian statelessness are central to the Palestinian nationalist discourse. Although the vast majority of refugees today were not personally uprooted in 1948, they still express a strong connection to the birthplace of their ancestors. Many still have the keys and the proof of ownership of their family’s former homes, which are passed on from generation to generation.
In 2018, the Trump administration ended all US support for UNWRA, creating a financial crisis for the organization. Funding has been temporarily sustained mostly by Muslim donor countries and private donations, but the organization is faced a significant budget shortage as of October 2019. At the same time, various European countries suspended their funding to UNRWA as well following reports of ethical misconduct, nepotism and discrimination within the organization. In 2021, under the Biden Administration, the U.S. resumed and increased its monetary support for UNWRA.