“Al – Nakba”… facts and numbers - report

Ahlul Bayt News Agency - Introduction: “Al – Nakba” is a Palestinian term that looks into the human tragedy associated with the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

It is the name the Palestinians call their displacement, and the destruction of most of their political, economic and cultural aspects in 1948, it is the year the Palestinians were forced out of their homes and lands and lost it in order to establish the “occupation state of Israel”.

The events of Al – Nakba include the occupation of most of the Palestinian land by the Zionist movement, and forcing out more than 900,000 Palestinians and turning them into refugees, they formed half of the population of Palestine at that time, now they are more than 5,000,000 refugees living in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the hosting Arab countries (Jordan, Lebanon, Syria).

This event also includes tens of massacres, pillage and atrocities against the Palestinians, demolishing more than 500 villages and turning major Palestinian cities into Israeli cities.

Most of the nomad tribes in Al – Naqab (Negev) were forced out, they also tried to destroy the Palestinian Identity and replacing the geographical Arab names with Hebrew ones, and destroying the authentic Arab landmarks through their continuous Judaization attempts.

Although politicians chose the 15th of May 1948 to be the memory of the Palestinian Nakba; this tragedy started before that when terrorist Zionist gangs attacked Palestinian towns and villages, in order to annihilate them and to spread fear and terror in the hearts of neighboring towns’ people, so they would leave their homes.
 
Facts and numbers:

Although the Israeli “Defense” Forces (IDF) or army was keen on concealing the facts relating to war crimes and massacres committed by the Jewish Militias - the (IDF) later - in 1948, especially in the period between May 1948 to March 1948, researchers and historians noted many facts which we will try to narrate in this document.

• The Palestinians started 4 main revolts, which all aimed to prevent the rising of “The state of Israel”, the Palestinians offered hundreds of martyrs, and the Jewish settlers suffered major losses which held back the declaration of their state for 20 years according to historians.

• Historians indicated that in 1948; 40,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by committing 50 documented massacres.

• The destroyed Palestinian villages were more than 500, the villages were wiped out along with their cultural and historical scenes, which represents the identity of the place, while the Jews tried to fabricate new demographic and topographic facts to falsify history, the land area confiscated by the Israeli Entity in its state declaration day was about 17,000 square kilometers (63% of Palestine’s area size).

• The number of Palestinians in 1950, two years after Naqba, was about 957,000 refugees, about 66% of Palestinians at that time. The number of Palestinian refugees according to the latest statistics has reached 5,400,000 refugees, 75% of the total Palestinians today are refugees and displaced.

• At the day of Al – Nakba, Palestinians were scattered to 36 camps in Gaza, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and the United Nations created the “United Nations Relief And Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East - UNRWA”, the UNRWA was responsible for the Palestinian refugees of 1948, and the refugees of Al – Naksa in 1967 (The fall of Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza Strip).
 
The Palestinian refugee camps are distributed as follows:
The West Bank: 19 camps.
Gaza: 8 camps.
Jordan: 10 camps.
Lebanon: 12 camps.
Syria: 9 camps.




/129