In 1948, at Israel’s founding, Zionist forces ethnically cleansed and destroyed over 530 Palestinian villages and towns, killing more than ten thousand Palestinians in a series of civilian massacres. As Zionists seized over 78 percent of historic Palestine, nearly one million Palestinians, out of a population of 1.9 million, were expelled from their homes and made lifetime refugees. Many of those uprooted flooded to Gaza, tripling its population overnight and rendering the tiny strip a colossal concentration camp for refugees.

Palestinians refer to those tragic events as the Nakba, an Arabic term meaning “catastrophe,” which has become a synonym for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

The Nakba did not unfold overnight. It was carried out in different phases — or “plans,” as the Zionists called them. Plans A, B, and C aimed to prepare Zionist forces in Mandate Palestine for military and offensive campaigns against Palestinian targets, with the purpose of terrorizing the native population out of Palestine.