The Nakba, which means "catastrophe" in Arabic, refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Before the Nakba, Palestine was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. However, the conflict between Arabs and Jews intensified in the 1930s with the increase of Jewish immigration, driven by persecution in Europe, and with the Zionist movement aiming to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. In November 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution partitioning Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem under a UN administration. The Arab world rejected the plan, arguing that it was unfair and violated the UN Charter. Jewish militias launched attacks against Palestinian villages, forcing thousands to flee. The situation escalated into a full-blown war in 1948, with the end of the British Mandate and the departure of British forces, the declaration of independence of the State of Israel and the entry of neighboring Arab armies. The newly established Israeli forces launched a major offensive. The result of the war was the permanent displacement of more than half of the Palestinian population.

The Nakba encompasses the displacement, dispossession, statelessness, and fracturing of Palestinian society. It was a deliberate and systematic act intended to establish a Jewish majority state in Palestine. The Nakba was not a one-time event connected to the war in Palestine and its immediate catastrophic repercussions on the Palestinians. Rather, it refers to the accumulated Palestinian experience since the 1948 war up to the present. Israel continues to oppress and dispossess Palestinians to this day, albeit in a less explicit way than that during the Nakba.