These photos show Palestinian families forced to leave their homes and become refugees during the Nakba, or the creation of the Israeli state. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin revealed to the New York Times in 1979 his first-hand account of the expulsion of 50,000 Palestinian civilians from their Ramle and Lydda homes in the region now known as Tel Aviv during the 1948 war. He shared how when asked what was to be done with the Arab population, David Ben-Gurion (one of Israel’s founders and its first Prime Minister) responded “Drive them out!”
Featured photo:
Palestinian family carrying their possessions and fleeing their village in Galilee five months after the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. Credit: Reuters. Via TRTWorld.
United Nations’ photo of Palestinian women walking through the Naher al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon, 1952. Credit: Reuters. Via TRTWorld.
Palestinian refugees waiting for Red Cross rations in Jerusalem, early 1950s. Via PalestineRemembered.
Palestinian refugee camp called Mia Mia camp near Sidon, Lebanon in 1952. Photographed by UNRWA. Via PalestineRemembered. (Corroborated here: https://hal-sciencespo.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02320135/document and https://palmuseum.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/unrwa-photographs-1950-1978-a-view-on-history-or-shaped-by-history/ )
