The UN approves a plan to partition Palestine, and the British government prepares to withdraw from the country. Zionist forces put into motion a series of military operations to take most of Palestine by force. The fierce resistance, general but not centralized, put up by Palestinians and Arab volunteers, and the subsequent lukewarm intervention of Arab armies are insufficient to prevent the catastrophic loss of 78 percent of the land of Palestine. Out of the 875,000 Palestinians who live in the conquered territory that becomes Israel, 725,000 find themselves transformed into refugees, pushed out of the area; most of the depopulated towns and villages are destroyed. In August 1948, Constantine Zuraik, a leading Arab thinker, describes the events in Palestine as a Nakba. This term will evoke for generations of Palestinians and Arabs, and peoples across the world, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948.
