Explore Palestinian history, culture and lived experiences through interactive and tactile elements, video, objects and art.
Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present (Level 5 – Rights Today)
A moving exploration of the ongoing forced displacement of Palestinians
June 27, 2026 to November 30, 2028
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Photo: David S. Boyer, public domain
Exhibition details
The exhibit Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present explores the human rights violations related to the ongoing forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians.
Palestinians use the term al‐Nakba — Arabic for “the catastrophe” — to describe their mass displacement in 1948. For many, this uprooting is not a closed chapter of history. It is an experience that endures, shaped by wars, military occupation and violations of human rights across five generations.
Present‐day violence in Gaza and elsewhere in the occupied Palestinian territory is understood in relation to past experiences of displacement, war and loss. 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.
Today, millions of Palestinians remain refugees, living in exile around the world or in camps across the region. This intergenerational trauma lies at the heart of personal stories and human rights issues explored in this exhibit.
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.
As with all content at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, this exhibit centres personal voices and stories, and is grounded in a rigorous process of research and curation.
Palestinian families fleeing Khan Younis as Israeli forces intensify their military operations in southern Gaza, January 2024. The majority of Gaza’s population consists of people whose families were displaced in 1948. Photo: Ahmed Zaqout, Anadolu
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.
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.
The Nakba through their own words, art and culture
In fall 2022, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) recorded interviews with Palestinian Canadians in Montréal and Winnipeg. These interviews became part of the Museum’s oral history collection, which includes more than 300 interviews related to human rights.
Nawal Halawa during an interview with the CMHR at her home in Montréal in October 2022. Born in Jaffa, Palestine, in 1946, she and her family became refugees in 1948. Photo: Aaron Cohen, CMHR
In 1948, many Palestinians forcibly displaced took the keys to their homes with them, expecting to return soon. Today, these keys are powerful symbols of the ongoing forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians.
Keys to Rana Abdulla’s family home in Umm Khalid, Palestine (now Netanya, Israel), late 1800s‐early 1900s. Courtesy of Rana Abdulla, photo: Aaron Cohen, CMHR
Rooted in a centuries‐old textile tradition passed down through generations of women, tatreez embroidery became an important form of cultural resistance after the mass displacement of 1948, preserving memory and identity in exile. Throughout this exhibition, it appears in the graphic design, artifacts, and tactile elements as a visual thread linking memory, land and community.
A tactile tatreez panel invites visitors to explore the raised threads by touch and activate a film. Created by a local Palestinian Canadian university student, it incorporates patterns and colours she selected to reflect her family’s experience and ties to Jerusalem and Hebron.
Traditional Palestinian dress, known as a thobe, with tatreez embroidery and necklace from Gaza, early 1900s. This dress comes from the collection of Rana Abdulla’s mother, a Winnipeg Palestinian Canadian whose collection includes more than 100 thobes. Courtesy of Rana Abdulla, photo: Aaron Cohen, CMHR
Rajie Cook, a Palestinian American artist and graphic designer, created this work of art as a witness to life under military occupation. It reflects the years of the Second Intifada, from 2000 to 2005, when expanded curfews and closures further restricted basic rights and freedoms.
Curfews and Closures, an artwork created by Rajie Cook in 2002. Cook was born in New Jersey, but his parents were from Ramallah. Courtesy of the Arab American National Museum, 2022.14.10, photo: Aaron Cohen, CMHR
An interactive of “memory boxes” invites visitors to explore stories of displacement, memory and resilience shared by Palestinian Canadians Nakba survivors and their descendants. Through five themes — Forced displacement, Living culture, Longing for home, Resistance, and Lasting trauma — visitors encounter a series of artifacts linked to two‐minute videos that weave together personal reflections and lived experiences. Each artifact helps bring a theme to life, connecting objects, memories and stories across generations.
Poetry by Mahmoud Darwish and artwork by Malak Mattar
We travel like other people, but we return to nowhere.... We have a country of words. Speak, speak so we may know the end of this travel.
The exhibit includes poetry by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, including excerpts from Think of Others and We Travel Like Other People. Together with personal stories, artifacts and artwork by Malak Mattar, a young Palestinian artist from Gaza whose work has been shaped by experiencing repeated wars in childhood and adolescence, the poetry highlights the important role of art and culture in sustaining memory, identity and resilience.
Stanzas from Darwish’s poetry and a painting by Malak Mattar are projected onto three floor‐to‐ceiling banners, alongside other historical and contemporary images.
Painting Bound Together in Gaza by Gazan artist Malak Mattar, 2020. Mattar gives voice to a generation shaped by repeated wars through her paintings. This work references Guernica — Picasso’s iconic portrayal of civilians suffering in war. Image: Malak Mattar
Artwork by Najat El‐Taji El‐Khairy
The title card of this video features an artwork by Najat El‐Taji El‐Khairy, a Montréal‐based Palestinian Canadian artist. Born a refugee in 1948, she came from a family forcibly displaced from their home and land, which included Jaffa orange and grapefruit orchards. Jaffa oranges were internationally known and widely exported, especially to Europe. One of the objects in the exhibit, loaned by the artist, is a wrapper for Jaffa oranges that her mother held onto and used to share their family’s story with children and grandchildren.
Painting Liberty by Montréal‐based artist Najat El‐Taji El‐Khairy, 2009. Artwork © Najat El‐Taji El‐Khairy
Summary
Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present is on display in the Rights Today gallery from June 27, 2026, to November 30, 2028.
Reflection questions
How can personal stories help us understand forced displacement as a human rights issue, no matter where in the world it occurs?
What do objects, art and culture reveal about people’s experiences of human rights?
How can learning about Palestinian experiences shape the way we think about human rights today?
Dive deeper
The Palestinian Nakba
We invite you to explore this guide as a starting point to learning about the historical and current forced displacement of Palestinians.
Forced Displacement
In this guide, you will find resources about forced displacement worldwide.
“My future children will never get to experience the home I knew”
By Damhat Zagros
A first person’s reflection on being forced from home and wrestling with what that means for him and for future generations. The article provides evocative narrative as well as background on international law as it relates to refugees and internally displacement peoples and the intergenerational effects of trauma and displacement.
