The word nabka is Arabic for catastrophe and refers to the expulsion of Palestinians, Muslim and Christian, from the land and villages of what now constitutes Israel. In November 1947, following World War II and the Holocaust, the newly-created United Nations approved a plan to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states although the land was inhabited largely by the Palestinian Arab population.
The Palestinian Arab state was to be created on just 42% of Palestine, even though Muslim and Christian Palestinians made up a large majority of the population and had been living there for thousands of years. Jerusalem was to be governed by a special international administration.
Almost immediately Zionist militias began expelling Arabs from their home. The estimate is between 750,000 and a million. Following several massacres by the Zionist militias, Palestinians fled from their homes becoming refugees in several adjoining countries. More than 400 towns and villages were systematically destroyed.