Education

A walled Ottoman port on the Galilee coast, famous for withstanding Napoleon’s siege in 1799, with a sub-district of olive groves and fishing villages behind it. The city fell in July 1948 and most of its Palestinian residents were displaced; a minority stayed.

A hill town in the Upper Galilee highlands, a centre of trade and of Jewish mysticism, ringed by dozens of Palestinian villages. It was taken in May 1948 and its Palestinian population left or was expelled almost in full.

A mixed town on the shore of Lake Tabariyya with a long history of Arab and Jewish quarters side by side. In April 1948 its Palestinian residents were evacuated under British escort and never allowed to return.

A Galilee hill town and Christian pilgrimage centre. It surrendered in July 1948 under a signed agreement and, unusually, its people were not expelled — so it absorbed refugees from the villages around it.

A town where the Galilee meets the Jordan Valley, on old trade roads, surrounded by some of the most fertile farmland in the country. Its residents were expelled in May 1948, many of them across the river.

The industrial heart of Mandate Palestine: a deep-water port, the railway works, the oil terminal, and a Palestinian working and middle class of dockers, clerks and printers. In April 1948 the great majority of them fled or were driven out by sea.

A town on the edge of the Marj Ibn Amir plain and a centre of the 1936–39 revolt. It held in 1948 and then took in refugees from Haifa and the Carmel villages, who built the camp beside it.

A farming town where the hills meet the coastal plain, known for its citrus and its agricultural school. The 1949 armistice line cut it off from most of its land, and two refugee camps were built on what remained.

A mountain city between Gerizim and Ebal — olive oil soap, kanafeh, and a reputation earned in every revolt from 1834 onwards, which is why it is called Jabal al-Nar, the Mountain of Fire.

The Bride of the Sea: the largest Palestinian city, the main port and the country’s cultural engine — newspapers, cinemas, publishing houses, and the orange groves that made Jaffa a word in every European market. Besieged and emptied between April and May 1948.

An eighth-century town on the Jaffa–Jerusalem road, twinned with neighbouring Lydda. Both were captured in July 1948 and their populations expelled on foot towards Ramallah in the July heat.

A cool hill town north of Jerusalem, historically Christian, known for its schools and printing presses. It doubled in size with refugees in 1948 and three camps grew around it.

Al-Quds: the Old City with al-Aqsa and the Holy Sepulchre, ringed by Palestinian suburbs — Talbiya, Qatamon, Baqʿa — whose residents were displaced in 1948 when the city was divided.

Al-Khalil: glass and ceramics, grapes and stone quarries, and the Ibrahimi Mosque at its centre, where 29 worshippers were killed by a settler in 1994.

An ancient coastal city at the crossroads between Egypt and the Levant, with a sub-district of citrus and grain villages. In 1948 its population trebled as refugees arrived from Jaffa, Ramle and the Naqab and were not allowed home.

Bir al-Sabʿ and the Naqab — by far the largest sub-district, the land of Bedouin tribes who grazed and grew grain across it. The town fell in October 1948 and most of the Naqab’s people were expelled or confined to a closed zone.