Project 48

Project48 centers and celebrates the work of Palestinian scholars, archivists and activists. We place personal testimonies, photographs and artifacts from Nakba survivors and their descendants into the potent context of over a century of Palestinian dispossession from their homeland. Israeli and international historians provide compelling research and analysis on Zionism and the legacy of policies that emanate from settler-colonial ideology. The curriculum is rich with material on Palestinian society prior to the Nakba, the lead-up to 1948, tactical massacres and expulsion operations, the ongoing expropriation and settlement of Palestinian land, and the denial of the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

The curriculum also draws on the educational work of groups like Zochrot and Badil, and previous efforts such as Facing The Nakba. This project would not be possible without the extraordinary contribution of the Institute for Palestine studies, and the authors they have published over the many decades.

Below you will find material from the Sessions, Tracks, and Modules that compose the Palestinian Nakba Curriculum, as well as recommended additional resources within each section. Note that PDFs and links can be found within the curriculum itself.

Opening Session

Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History, Nur Masalha, Bloomsbury, 2020
Who Are Palestine’s People?, Dr. Maha Nassar, FMEP Podcast, 2022

Session 1: The Nakba

The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Rashid Khalidi. Chapter 1 “Arab Society in Mandatory Palestine: David and Goliath in 1948” (pp. 1-22) & Chapter 2 “The Palestinians and the British Mandate” pp. 31-37
Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948, Nur Masalha: Chapter 1, pp 5-27
The Time of Small Returns, Lena Jayyusi in An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba by Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha, pp. 88-107
From Law and Order to Pacification: Britain’s Suppression of the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936-39, Matthew Hughes, Journal of Palestine Studies, Winter 2010, pp. 6–22
Great Arab Revolt, British and International Commissions of Inquiry, and the Balfour Declaration, from Palquest
Lost Cities of Palestine, Documentary by Ramez Kazmouz
Palestinian Indigeneity: Identity Shaped by Oppression, Ruqaiyah Damrah, Perspectives: The Yale Journal on Israel and Palestine
On Wings of Memory, Bayan Nuwayhed al-Hout, Institute for Palestine Studies, Jerusalem Quarterly, Issue 74, Summer 2018
No Laughing Matter: Caricaturing colonialism in British Mandate Palestine, Cartoons as expressions of anti-colonial consciousness, Palquest
Terror in Galilee: British-Jewish Collaboration and the Special Night Squads in Palestine during the Arab Revolt, 1938–39. Matthew Hughes, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2015, pp 590-610

Session 2: The Nakba in Practice

Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, Fayez Sayegh (2012) Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (1965), Settler Colonial Studies, 2:1, (pp 206-225)
Dispossession Reconsidered: Israel, Nakba, Things, Rebecca L. Stein, Ethnologie Française, Volume 45, Issue 2, 2015, (pp 309-320)
The Dispossessed, Saleem Haddad in Slate Magazine, May 2015
Decolonization Is A Global Project: From Palestine to the Americas, Linda Tabar & Chandni Desai from Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2017, Vol. 6, No. 1,(pp i-xix)
Purchase by any other Means: The Palestine Nakba and Zionism’s Conquest of Economics, Patrick Wolfe, 2013
Israel-Palestine Through a Settler-Colonial Studies Lens, Lorenzo Veracini, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 2018
Jerusalem Beyond Partition, Rania Muhareb, This Week in Palestine, 2021
Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, 2010 (1997) by Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University Press
1948: Looting of Palestinian Property, Story Map, Akevot Institute
Like a Swarm of Locusts, Ofer Aderet, Haaretz 2020
Presence and Absence in ‘Abandoned’ Palestinian Villages, Rona Sela, History of Photography
Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, Nadia Abu El Hajj, University of Chicago Press, 2001
Mapping Palestine: Erasure and Unerasure, Ahmed Barclay
If it is Tuesday, this must be Occupied Palestine: Tourism in the Service of Israeli Colonialism, Halah Ahmad
Writing/righting Palestine studies: settler colonialism, Indigenous sovereignty and resisting the ghost(s) of history, Rana Barakat, Settler Colonial Studies, 8:3, pp. 349-363, 2017
Nakba and Survival: The Story of the Palestinians who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee (1948-1956), Adel Manna, Institute for Palestine Studies, 2016 (Arabic)

Session 3: Ongoing Nakba

Return to Half-Ruins, Lila Abu-Lughod from Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, edited by Ahmad H. Sa‘di and Lila Abu-Lughod (pg 77 – 104)
Memory of the Cactus, Documentary by Hanna Musleh
The June 1967 War and the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Tom Segev, Journal of Palestine Studies, excerpted from 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East, 2007
Here We Will Remain, Badil video on East Jerusalem’s Batan al-Hawa neighborhood
The Palestinian Nakba: What Happened in 1948 and Why It Still Matters Video (Webinar) May 2021, 85mins
The Ongoing Nakba: Video, Israel/Social TV, 2018
Israeli veterans recall horrors of country’s victory in six-day war, Emma Graham-Harrison, Aug. 2015, The Guardian
June 1967 War: A Watershed in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Palquest
The Nation-state Law Paves the Way for a New Nakba, Neveen Abu Rahmoun, Haaretz Oct. 2018
General’s Final Confession Links 1956 Massacre to Israel’s Secret Plan to Expel Arabs, Haaretz
Taking the Land without the People: The 1967 Story as Told by the Law, Noura Erakat, Journal of Palestine Studies
“I Forgot, Like You, To Die: 12 Palestinian Writers Respond to the Ongoing Nakba”, Noor Hindi in Against Erasure, Lit Hub
73 Years of Ongoing Nakba, Al-Haq: Defending Human Rights (Ramallah)

Session 4: Zionism – Foundation and Intentions

Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims, The Edward Said Reader, 1979. Ch. 5 (from The Question of Palestine)
The Original No: Why the Arabs Rejected Zionism, and Why It Matters, Natasha Gill, Middle East Policy Council, 2013
Survival of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris, Haaretz, Jan 2004 (English in Logos Journal)
World Zionist Organization, Palquest
A Hidden Question, Yitzhak Epstein, 1905. Published 1907 in HaShiloah. Forward by Alan Doty, 2021
Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims, Ella Shohat. Social Text, No. 19/20 Duke University Press (Autumn, 1988), pp. 1-35
Ben-Gurion’s 1937 letter to his son Amos, Ben-Gurion archive (translation by Institute for Palestine Studies)
Key Quotations from a) The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p. 27, b) Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians, p. 66, c) Benny Morris’ Righteous Victims, p. 143, d) Simha Flapan’s The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, p. 22

Session 5: Testimony & Storytelling as History

Palestinian Camp Women as Tellers of History, Rosemary Sayigh, Journal of Palestine Studies, 1998, (pg 42-58)
The Nakba Dailies, from Chronicles of a Refugee, Episode #1 (49mins)
Oral History, Which Records Once-Silenced Voices, Gains Ground in the Arab World, Dana Abed, Al Fanar, 2019
Narrating Palestine: The Palestinian Oral History Archive Project, Hana Sleiman and Kaoukab Chebaro, Journal of Palestine Studies, 2018, pp. 63-73
Interviews with refugees in Lebanon, Nakba Archives, 2008 (16mins)
Analyzing Oral Histories, Ellen Fleischmann in World History Commons
Women’s Testimonies of the Nakba, Zochrot 2006
Women in Baqa’a and A Camp, Testimonies: NOUR Productions, Project48, IMEU
An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba, Nahla Abdo, Nur Masalha
The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries, Rosemary Sayigh
Palestinian Oral History Archive, from American University of Beirut, the Nakba Archive, & Al Jana
The Tantura Case in Israel: The Katz Research and Trial, Ilan Pappé, Institute for Palestine Studies, Spring 2021
Video Testimonies: Fatima Radwan, Deir Yassin Survivor, IMEU. Tikva Honig-Parnass, former Palmach soldier, Zochrot. Naima Deeb al-Ali, Tantura Massacre Survivor, Zochrot. Amnon Neumann, former Palmach soldier Zochrot

Session 6: Archive as Power

Palestine: Doing Things with Archives, Lila Abu-Lughod, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, May 2018, pp. 3-5
Archiving Palestine and the Palestinians: The Patrimony of Ihsan Nimr, Beshara Doumani, pp. 3-11
The Imperial Condition of Photography in Palestine Archives, Looting, and the Figure of the Infiltrator, Ariella Azoulay in Graylit, Nov. 2019
Why Are Countless Palestinian Photos and Films Buried in Israeli Archives? Haaretz feature of Rona Sela, July 2017
Geneology of Colonial Plunder and Erasure: Israel’s Control over Palestinian Archives, Rona Sela (2018) Social Semiotics, pp. 201-229
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017, Rashid Khalidi, 2020, Introduction pp. 1-15
The Great Book Robbery: Israel National Library, Documentary by Benny Brunner
An Indicative Archive: Salvaging Nakba Documents, Ilan Pappe, Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. XLIX, No. 3 (Spring 2020), pp. 22-37
Silencing, DSDE’s Concealment of Documents in (Israeli) Archives, AKEVOT
Plan Dalet, Walid Khalidi, Journal of Palestine Studies, Section 3, “Assignment of Duties,” pp. 24-33
Perhaps Do Not Believe Me Were I to Talk to You of War, Asmaa Azaizeh Asymptote Journal, translated from the Arabic by Yasmine Haj
LOOTED & HIDDEN: Palestinian Archives in Israel, Documentary, Rona Sela, 2018
Testimonies From the Censored Deir Yassin Massacre: ‘They Piled Bodies and Burned Them’, Haaretz 2017
Israel’s Vanishing Files, Archival Deception and Paper Trails Shay Hazkani, MERIP (Summer 2019)
Poems: I Belong There by Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Carolyn Forche and Munir Akash, There Was No Farewell, Taha Muhammad Ali. Running Orders, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Session 7: Refugees & the Right of Return

Why Palestinians Have A Right to Return Home, A conversation with Karma Nabulsi, Susan Akram, Ingrid Jaradat Gassner, Al Jazeera 2011
Palestinian Refugees and the Right of Return in International Law, Loureen Sayej, Oxford University
How can the return of Palestinian refugees become feasible? +972 Podcast: A conversation with Badil’s Loubna Shomali
Right of Return: Towards a Practical Approach, BADIL Palestinian Youth Conference, 2019
The Power of Palestinian Return If Only for an Afternoon, Bahira Amin, Scene Arabia 2020
Palestinian Refugees: Myth vs Reality, Nooran Alhamdan, Middle East Institute Policy Center 2021
Affirmation of the Palestinian Right of Return, Al Ahram
Relive the Journey of Refugees, Interactive Storytelling, MEMO
The Right to Return of Palestinians in International Law, Kathleen Lawand, International Journal of Refugee Law 8, no. 4 (1996) pp 532-68
Tomorrow My Family and Neighbors May Be Forced From Our Homes by Israeli Settlers, Mohammed El-Kurd, The Nation, May 2021
Awards of the 5th year (architecture) competition for the reconstruction of destroyed Palestinian villages, Video: Salman Abu Sitta, 2021 @22:10-1:00:00
5 Things America Knew About The Nakba As It Unfolded, Josh Ruebner, MEI, 2022
Al-Nakba: 1948 Palestinian Exodus: Refugees & Right to Return, Resource hub from AUB
Demonstrating the desired future: performative dimensions of internally displaced Palestinians’ return activities, Tiina Järvi, Geografiska Annaler, 2021
UN Report: The Right of Return of the Palestinian People
The Question of Palestine & The General Assembly
Truman Letter to Ben-Gurion Expresses Displeasure Regarding Territory, Refugees (May 28, 1949)
Uprooted in 1948, Residents of Ikrit Vow to Return to Their Village, Haaretz 2013
A Jewish Case for Palestinian Refugee Return, Peter Beinart, The Guardian 2021
The Palestinians Fleeing Syria Are Among the Most Vulnerable Refugees, The Nation, Dec 2015

Session 8: Ongoing Resistance

Guerrilla warfare and the mass strike in the 1936 Revolt, Palquest
Palestinians Stage Historic General Strike from the River to the Sea for the First Time Since 1936, Video: Democracy Now, June 2021
Geographies of Intimacy: Contemporary Renewals of Black–Palestinian Solidarity, Noura Erakat, Marc Lamont Hill, Journal of Palestine Studies (Summer 2019), pp 7-14
The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, Ghassan Kanafani, 1972, Committee for a Democratic Palestine
Palestinians are holding weddings, baptisms, burials in villages destroyed by Israel, Suha Arraf in +972, 2019
“We Teach Life, Sir”, Video: Poem by Rafeef Ziadeh, 2011
Palestine Youth Movement: From Standing Rock to Palestine, video
The Emergence of the Palestinian Women’s Movement, 1929-39, Ellen Fleischmann
Palestinian cultural resistance: Art in the face of violence
From Law and Order to Pacification: Britain’s Suppression of the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936-39, Matthew Hughes, Journal of Palestine Studies (Winter 2010) pg. 6–22
Poetry of Resistance
Roundtable on Anti-Blackness and Black-Palestinian Solidarity
What Palestine Taught Me About American Racism, Vic Mensa, Time Magazine, 2018

Closing Session

The Continuity of Trauma, epilogue from The Palestine Nakba Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory, Nur Mashala pp. 251-257, Zed Books (2012)/Bloomsbury, pp. 251-257

Module 1: Settler Colonialism & Palestine

Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims, The Edward Said Reader, 1979. Ch. 5 (from The Question of Palestine, 1979)
Writing/Righting Palestine Studies: Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Sovereignty and Resisting the Ghost(s) of History. Rana Barakat, Settler Colonial Studies, 2017
Dismantling Colonial Rule, Salaita, Steven, Truthout, May 25, 2017
Imagining Palestine’s Alter-natives, Lila Abu Lughod, Critical Inquiry Volume 47, Number 1, University of Chicago Press, Autumn 2020
Decolonization is not a metaphor by Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 1-40 , 2012
Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and Environmental Injustice, Kyle Whyte, Environment and Society 9, no. 1: 125–44, 2018
Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native, Patrick Wolfe, Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 pp: 387–409, Dec, 200
The Settler Colonial Present, Lorenzo Veracini, Palgrave Macmillin, 2015
What is Settler Colonialism, Maya Mikdashi, Jadaliyya, 2012
Decolonization Is A Global Project: From Palestine to the Americas, Linda Tabar & Chandni Desai, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2017, Vol. 6, No. 1,(pp. i-xix)
Sai Englert, What is at Stake in the Study of Settler Colonialism?
Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017, Metropolitan Books, 2020
The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon, Grove Press, 1963
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
J. Kēhaulani Kauanui
Cultural genocide’: the shameful history of Canada’s residential schools, The Guardian
Beyond Genocide: a comparative analysis of the elimination of Australia’s Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander people, T. Crotty, NEW: Emerging Scholars in Australian Indigenous Studies, 2(1), 32-37, 2018
Fifty Years of Occupation, Sherene Seikaly, MERIP
The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory, Nur Masalha, Chapter 1, p.33
The Law of Return, Jewish Virtual Library
Absentees’ Property Law (1950), Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel
Israel’s Jewish Nation State Law (2018), Adalah
Inter/nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine, Steven Salaita Minnesota University Press, 2016
From Jerusalem to the Grand River, Our Struggles are One: Challenging Canadian and Israeli Settler Colonialism, Mike Krebs and Dana M. Olwan, Settler Colonial Studies 2, no. 2: 138–64, 2013
Israel-Palestine and the Settler Colonial ‘Turn’: From Interpretation to Decolonization. Theory, Culture & Society, 2018
Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native OR Purchase by any other Means, Patrick Wolfe
The Palestinian Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory, Bloomsbury, Nur Masalha, 2012
Delegitimation of Israel or Social-Historical Analysis? The Debate over Zionism as a Colonial Settler Movement, Yoav Peled, Part 3, Israel, Zionism and the Left, Cambridge University Press, 2017
Settler Colonialism Then and Now. A Conversation between J.K. Kauanui & Patrick Wolfe, 2012
Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine, Jabary-Salamanca, Omar, Mezna Qato, Kareem Rabie, and Sobhi Samour. Settler Colonial Studies 2, no. 1: 1–8, 2012
Settler Colonialism, the Politics of Fear and Security Theology, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian In Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015
Settler Colonialism as Structure: A Framework for Comparative Studies of U.S. Race and Gender Formation, Nakano-Glenn, Evelyn, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1, no. 1: 52–72, 2015
The Political Economy of Israeli Occupation: What is Colonial about It?, Leila Farsakh In Electronic Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, No.8, Spring 2008
The Nation-State Law: Negotiating Liberal Settler Colonialism, Lana Tatour, Critical Times (2021) 4 (3): 577–587
Palestinians stand with Standing Rock
73 Years of Ongoing Nakba, Palestinians Continue to be Steadfast against Israel’s Settler-Colonial and Apartheid Regime, Al Haq, 2021

Module 2: Zionism (Part 1)

The Jewish State, Theodor Herzl, Chapter II, “The Jewish Question”, 1886, (Texts Concerning Zionism from the Jewish Virtual Library)
Israel’s “new history” and the Palestinians, Avi Shlaim, Open Democracy, Nov. 2009
This Land is Our Land, Raja Shehadeh, New York Review of Books, Jan. 2018
Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, Fayez Sayigh, (2012) Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (1965), Settler Colonial Studies, 2:1, 206-225, DOI: 10.1080/2201473X.2012.10648833
Haifa’s Arabs: Displacement & Concentration, Benny Morris, Middle East Journal, Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 241-259 (19 pages) Spring, 1988
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017, Rashid Khalidi, 2020, Introduction pp. 1-15
History of the Question of Palestine, UN Partition Plan
Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question, Palquest
Land Ownership in Palestine, Sami Hadawi, The Palestine Arab Refugee Office, 1957
Nakba and Survival: The Story of the Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948–1956, Adel Manna, Institute for Palestine Studies, 2016

Photo Credit: G. Eric and Edith Matson Collection