Nakba – A curated list of resources

• Nakba 101, Let’s Talk Palestine. Visually rich primer designed for newcomers, breaking down the Nakba’s causes, scale, and ongoing consequences.
• Palestine 101, Palestine Diaspora Movement. Diaspora-led educational resource covering Palestinian history, identity, and the right of return.
• The Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question, Institute for Palestine Studies. Comprehensive thematic and chronological archive of the Palestinian question, with primary sources and scholarship.
• Palestinian Oral History Archive, American University of Beirut. Digital archive of audio-recorded testimonies from first-generation Palestinian refugees.
• Palestine Remembered: Nakba Oral History. Crowd-sourced archive of village histories, testimonies, and maps documenting the more than 500 Palestinian localities depopulated in 1948.

• All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Walid Khalidi (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992). The definitive reference work documenting more than 400 destroyed Palestinian villages.
• Voices of the Nakba: A Living History of Palestine, edited by Diana Allan (Pluto Press, 2021). Oral histories from Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, recorded over four decades.
• The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory, Nur Masalha (Zed Books, 2012). A landmark study reframing the Nakba through the lens of memory, oral history, and decolonial scholarship.
• Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, edited by Ahmad H. Sa’di and Lila Abu-Lughod (Columbia University Press, 2007). Foundational essay collection bringing together leading scholars on memory, refugeehood, and the politics of remembrance.
• Nakba and Survival: The Story of Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948-1956, Adel Manna (University of California Press, 2022). Recovers the history of Palestinians who remained inside the 1948 borders, a story long marginalized in both Israeli and Palestinian narratives.
• Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries, Rosemary Sayigh (Zed Books, 1979). Pioneering oral history of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, tracing the transformation of a peasant society into a revolutionary movement.
• The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, Rashid Khalidi (Metropolitan Books, 2020). Accessible and rigorous overview of a century of colonial war on Palestine, drawing on family archives and primary sources.
• The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappé (Oneworld, 2006). Influential historical study drawing on declassified Israeli military archives to document the deliberate, planned nature of 1948.
• In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story, Ghada Karmi (Verso, 2002). Memoir of exile and identity by a Palestinian doctor and writer forced from Jerusalem as a child in 1948.

• Ghassan Kanafani’s short stories and novellas on the Nakba:

The Land of Sad Oranges (1958). Short story collection capturing the immediate aftermath of expulsion.

Men in the Sun (1962). Novella following three Palestinian refugees attempting to smuggle themselves to Kuwait, a haunting allegory of displacement.

Returning to Haifa (1969). Novella imagining a Palestinian couple’s return to their former home in Haifa after twenty years.

All That’s Left to You (1966). Novella set in Gaza, following a brother and sister navigating exile and family rupture.

• Gate of the Sun, Elias Khoury, translated by Humphrey Davies (Archipelago Books, 2005; originally Arabic, 1998). Sweeping novel often described as the Palestinian national epic, weaving together the stories of refugees in the Shatila camp.
• Mornings in Jenin, Susan Abulhawa (Bloomsbury, 2010). Multi-generational novel following a Palestinian family from the 1948 expulsion through the Jenin refugee camp and into exile. [Title corrected from “Morning” to “Mornings” in the original draft.]
• The Woman from Tantoura, Radwa Ashour, translated by Kay Heikkinen (American University in Cairo Press, 2014). Novel following a young woman from the coastal village of Tantoura through the 1948 massacre and decades of exile in Lebanon.
• Minor Detail, Adania Shibli, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette (New Directions, 2020). Short, formally striking novel pairing a 1949 atrocity with a present-day Palestinian woman’s attempt to investigate it.
• Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems, Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché with Sinan Antoon and Amira El-Zein (University of California Press, 2003). The most widely circulated English-language Darwish collection, drawing on six of his later volumes.

• A Forensic Account of the Horrors My Family Experienced During the Nakba, Salman Abu Sitta (Mondoweiss, 2026). Personal essay by the foremost cartographer of pre-1948 Palestine, drawing on his own family’s documented experience.
• The Origins of the Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians, 1920-1947, Zachary Foster (Palestine Nexus). Long-form historical essay tracing the intellectual and operational roots of 1948 back to the early Mandate period.
• Plan Dalet: Blueprint for the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, IMEU. Accessible briefing on the 1948 Zionist military plan that drove the systematic depopulation of Palestinian villages. 

• Return to al-Ma’in, Forensic Architecture with Salman Abu Sitta (2025). Reconstruction of historian Salman Abu Sitta’s birthplace, the village of al-Ma’in, destroyed by Zionist forces on 14 May 1948. Premiered on 14 May 2025, the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, and seen together with related FA work on the 2023 attack on al-Ahli hospital, it explicitly threads 1948 and Gaza through the testimonies of uncle and nephew.
• The Massacre at Tur al-Zagh: al-Dawayima, 29 October 1948, Forensic Architecture with Palestine Land Society (2024). Investigation uncovering new evidence on the 1948 massacre at al-Dawayima, working first-hand with Nakba survivors and contemporaneous Israeli archival material.
• Tantura, Forensic Architecture (2023). Investigation launched on the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, locating mass graves of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces after the village’s occupation on 22 to 23 May 1948, including one previously unidentified.
• Ground Truth: Dispossession and Return in al-Araqib, Forensic Architecture (2017, ongoing). Collaborative investigation with the al-Turi, al-Uqbi, and Abu Freih families of al-Araqib, a Palestinian Bedouin village in the Naqab demolished and rebuilt over 200 times. The clearest demonstration that the Nakba is a present-tense process inside the 1948 borders. 

The work of memory is intergenerational. Resources to read with children, or to share with parents and educators.

• Sitti’s Secrets, Naomi Shihab Nye, illustrated by Nancy Carpenter (Four Winds Press / Simon & Schuster, 1994; Aladdin Paperbacks reprint, 1997). Picture book about Mona, an Arab-American girl visiting her Palestinian grandmother, weaving together village life, the language they invent to bridge their tongues, and a closing letter to the U.S. President advocating for peace. Suitable for ages 4 to 9.
• Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine, Hannah Moushabeck, illustrated by Reem Madooh (Chronicle Books, 2023). Autobiographical picture book in which three sisters listen to their father’s bedtime stories of Jerusalem, a city they have inherited through memory rather than visit. Endorsed by Naomi Shihab Nye and widely used in schools.

• Rethinking Palestine, Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network (2020, ongoing). Monthly podcast hosted by Yara Hawari, bringing together Palestinian policy analysts and scholars worldwide for sustained policy-grade conversation.
• Makdisi Street, Saree Makdisi, Ussama Makdisi, and Karim Makdisi (independent, 2023, ongoing). Weekly podcast co-hosted by three Makdisi brothers, drawing on a wide pool of Palestinian and international scholars, journalists, and policy figures. Scholarly-conversational register.
• The Palestine Pod, Lara E. and Mikey B. (independent, 2021, ongoing). Weekly podcast co-hosted by a Palestinian-American lawyer and a Jewish-American comedian, mixing news commentary, guest interviews, and accessible legal and historical context. Lighter in register than the other two.