Nakba narrative: What Arab leaders said about Palestine

Part Two of a Six-Part series

On May 15, as has been done for decades, Palestinian Arabs, their supporters and Israel detractors observed the “Nakba” or the catastrophe of Israel’s birth in 1948. In order to understand the veracity of that narrative and how it’s been conflated in modern dialogue and reporting, it’s important to understand what lies behind that.

A core element of the Nakba narrative is the notion that there was an independent entity known as “Palestine,” that was occupied, and a “Palestinian” people that were displaced with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Indeed th...