15 May 1948: The Nakba

On this day, 15 May 1948, the British mandate in Palestine ended on the date which is now commemorated as Nakba Day - meaning “catastrophe”. Israel declared independence a few hours beforehand, and British forces withdrew that day.

The Nakba refers to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to make way for the establishment of the state of Israel as a Jewish ethnostate.

The United Nations had approved a plan to partition Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. According to that plan, the 30% of the population which was Jewish would be given 70% of the land. But around 42% of the population of this land would still be Palestinian Arabs. 

To ensure a bigger demographic majority, in December 1947 Zionist militias began a programme of ethnic cleansing, to expel the Palestinian Arab population. One early operation was an attack by the Irgun against the village of al-Tira, which killed 12 Palestinians and injured six others. Albert Einstein and other Jewish intellectuals described the Irgun as "a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organisation".

Attacks and massacres continued until the British withdrawal. Haifa was attacked in April, forcing its 55,000 residents to flee, and then Safad was besieged, until its population of nearly 10,000 people was expelled.

After the end of the British mandate, armies from Arab countries including Egypt and Jordan entered Palestine and the Arab-Israeli war began. Meanwhile, the ethnic cleansing continued. On May 22, Zionists massacred between 100 and 230 people in the village of al-Tantura.

By the time the war ended in 1949, 8000-15,000 Palestinian Arabs had been killed and over 400 towns and villages had been destroyed and ethnically cleansed. Israel had taken over 77% of the land area of Mandate Palestine, and expelled over 700,000 Palestinians - 90% of the Arab population.

The Nakba was first commemorated on May 15 by Palestinians in 1949, and Nakba Day became an official annual commemoration in 1998.

Learn more about Palestine and local workers' struggles under the British mandate in episodes 86-87 of our podcast:

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