The premise that the Nakba occurred solely because Arab armies invaded Israel is historically incomplete. While the official 1948 Arab-Israeli war began with the intervention of neighboring Arab states on May 15, 1948, the mass displacement of over 250,000 Palestinians—and the systematic destruction of villages—began months earlier, immediately following the UN Partition Plan in November 1947.

Chronology and Early Displacement

The First Phase (Pre-May 1948): Months before any regular Arab army crossed the border, Zionist paramilitary groups executed operations (such as Plan Dalet) inside Mandatory Palestine.

Targeted Operations: Major urban centers like Haifa and Jaffa, along with hundreds of rural villages, were depopulated during the civil war phase.

Impact of Atrocities: Events like the Deir Yassin massacre in April 1948 created widespread panic and accelerated the flight of civilian populations.

The Prevention of Return

Denial of Repatriation: The core mechanism turning wartime displacement into a permanent catastrophe (Nakba) was the Israeli government's explicit post-war policy forbidding refugees from returning to their homes.

Legal and Physical Erasure: Confiscation of "abandoned" properties and the demolition of over 500 villages institutionalized the permanence of the refugee crisis, independent of whether individuals fled due to direct military expulsion or crossfire