Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present

Opening June 27, 2026

This exhibition has not started yet.

Women and children carrying bundles on their heads walk along a dirt road. Partially obscured. — Photo: David S. Boyer, public domain

Palestinians use the word al‐Nakba — Arabic for “the catastrophe” — to describe their forced displacement in 1948.

In 1948, militias, followed by Israeli forces, expelled civilians, destroying or emptying hundreds of villages amid regional war and lasting instability. Around 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced during the creation of the State of Israel.

Five generations later, these people and their descendants still live with insecurity and uncertainty and are unable to return home.

The exhibition Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present explores the human rights violations related to the ongoing forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians. Featuring personal stories told through objects and video testimonies, the exhibit presents Palestinian Canadians reflecting on their ongoing struggle for justice and human rights. Together with art, photos, and text, these elements reveal enduring patterns of loss and resistance.

For Palestinians, the Nakba is both their history and their present — it is an ongoing process shaping every aspect of life today.

Forced Displacement

In everyday language, people may hear “forced displacement” and think mainly of people being physically forced from their homes. From a human rights perspective, the term also includes situations where people flee or leave because conflict, violence, human rights violations, disasters or other pressures make staying impossible or unsafe.

Forced displacement can be both a consequence of human rights violations and a cause of further violations.

Following the UN partition plan for Palestine adopted in 1947, and until the end of the 1948–1949 Arab‐Israeli war, about 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced. This represented more than half of the Palestinian Arab population of Palestine under British colonial rule, including about three quarters of the Palestinians who lived in the territory that became the State of Israel. Some were expelled by armed groups and then, after Israel’s declaration of independence in May 1948, by the Israeli army. Others fled in fear of violence or left after warnings or instructions, including from Palestinian Arab leaders who called on women, children and elderly people to leave some areas of fighting until conditions became safer. People left with the expectation that they would soon be able to return home

A long line of people carrying knapsacks and bags walk through the rubble of a city. — Displaced Palestinians walk along a road in Jabalia, as they leave areas near Gaza City, January 19, 2025. Photo: Omar Al-Qattaa, Getty Images

The Nakba

Historically, the term Nakba refers to the forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in 1948. In a modern sense, many people understand the Nakba not only as a past event, but as an ongoing process. This refers to the continuing effects of displacement, refugeehood, military occupation, settlement expansion, home demolitions, land confiscation, movement restrictions, blockade and repeated wars. This understanding of the Nakba as an ongoing process of forced displacement and dispossession is reflected in the work of many scholars, experts and human rights organizations.

We have not disappeared, and we have not forgotten. And we are here.

Rana Abdulla, Palestinian Canadian born in Kuwait, accountant, business owner, artist, grandmother, daughter of Nakba survivors.

Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present opens opens June 27, 2026 in the Rights Today gallery, on Level 5 of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

This exhibition is being developed in collaboration with an advisory network of scholars, artists and community members, whose insights and lived experiences shape its content and approach.

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