Al-Nakba: The Palestinian exodus of 1948 to the present | Al Jazeera - May 2017 |

Every year on May 15, Palestinians around the world, numbering about 12.4 million, mark the Nakba, or "catastrophe", referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society in 1948.

The Palestinian experience of dispossession and loss of a homeland is 69 years old this year.

On that day, the State of Israel came into being. The creation of Israel was a violent process that entailed the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland to establish a Jewish-majority state, as per the aspirations of the Zionist movement.

Between 1947 and 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians from a 1.9 million population were made refugees beyond the borders of the state. Zionist forces had taken more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, ethnically cleansed and destroyed about 530 villages and cities, and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in a series of mass atrocities, including more than 70 massacres.

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Israel continues to oppress and dispossess Palestinians to this day, albeit in a less explicit way than that during the Nakba.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine| by Ilan Pappe | (2006)

Jewish atrocities in the Holy Land memorandum Arab Higher Commission for Palestine at U.N.O.