Forced Displacement in Gaza Echoes the 1948 Nakba… And Britain Must Confront Their Shared Legacy

By: Avi Shlaim

Avi Shlaim (born October 31, 1945) is a British-Israeli historian and academic, born in Baghdad to an Iraqi Jewish family. He is an Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford University and an advisor to the "Britain Owes Palestine" campaign. He is considered one of the most prominent New Historians who re-examined the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, known for his critical stance on the traditional Zionist narrative, adopting a discourse supportive of Palestinian rights and critical of Israeli policies towards the Palestinian people.

Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, announced that his government's ultimate goal is to push large numbers of Palestinians to leave Gaza through what he described as “voluntary migration,” to be carried out “at the right time and in the right way.” But what is actually being discussed is a long-term plan for ethnic cleansing, based on making living conditions in Gaza unbearable. For anyone who has studied the history of Palestine, this discourse carries a clear echo of a catastrophe that occurred before.

I have spent most of my academic career studying the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a conflict made in Britain. In 1917, with a stroke of an imperial pen, the Promised Land became the subject of two promises, first to the Arabs, then later to the Zionist movement. The “Balfour Declaration” pledged support for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in a land whose overwhelming majority of inhabitants were Arab Palestinians, without their knowledge or consent.

Britain then ruled Palestine for three decades, establishing a legal and administrative structure that granted privileges to one community at the expense of another, while systematically restricting the rights of Palestinians. The first British High Commissioner to Palestine, Herbert Samuel, was Jewish and an enthusiastic Zionist. He initiated a policy of unrestricted Jewish immigration and land purchase, a policy that later triggered the Great Arab Revolt between 1936 and 1939.

In 1948, Britain withdrew from a conflict its policies had helped shape, leaving the indigenous population unprotected. During the ensuing war, some 750,000 Palestinians became refugees, and the name Palestine was erased from the map, known in Arabic as the “Nakba.”

In the same year, Israel carried out an ethnic cleansing operation in Palestine. Today, Israeli officials cloak ethnic cleansing in terms like “voluntary migration.” But when a people are subjected to continuous bombing, a suffocating siege, and systematic destruction of homes, hospitals, and food sources, no departure can be described as “voluntary.” Rather, what is happening is forced displacement of civilians. In the Zionist lexicon, it is called “transfer,” but in international law, it is a war crime and a crime against humanity.

The parallels between the ongoing war in Gaza and the 1948 war are strikingly clear. Then, as now, the uprooting of Palestinians from their land was portrayed as an unfortunate consequence of war, not one of its objectives, while Palestinians were denied any real role in determining their future.

In this context, the “Britain Owes Palestine” campaign submitted a 400-page legal petition to the British government, documenting Britain's unlawful actions during the Mandate period. The petition details, in horrifying detail, the violence, brutality, collective punishment, arbitrary arrests, and extrajudicial executions carried out by the British army to suppress the Arab Revolt. It also documents British government policies that made the Palestinian loss of Palestine not only possible but probable.

A cross-party coalition of 45 MPs and members of the House of Lords called on the British Prime Minister to respond to this petition. But after eight months, the government has not issued any response. This silence in itself constitutes a form of complicity with British crimes against the Palestinian people from 1917 to the present day.

Former Prime Minister Keir Starmer had affirmed his belief in the necessity of applying international law. However, possessing moral authority on the international stage also requires moral consistency at home. Britain cannot credibly condemn the forced displacement carried out by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank in 2026, while refusing to acknowledge its central role in the displacement of Palestinians in 1948.

Furthermore, the tools of control developed during the Mandate period, including torture, collective punishment, deportation, and the suspension of judicial oversight, did not disappear with the ignominious end of the British Mandate. Instead, the State of Israel inherited, expanded, and entrenched them within its institutions.

History does not repeat itself automatically; rather, it reproduces itself because those who have the power to break this cycle choose not to use it. The justification for British silence regarding Israeli crimes in Gaza has long since ended, and it is time for Britain to respect international law, hold Israel accountable, and end its complicity in the destruction of Gaza.