For Palestinians, the events between 1947 and 1949 are remembered as a time when Israeli military forces destroyed over 500 Palestinian villages and expelled between 700,000 and 900,000 Palestinians from their lands -- about 85 percent of the Palestinian population at that time. These refugees have lived exiled from their land since then. Today Palestinians represent one-third of the global refugee and internally displaced population. Learn about the Palestinians, who call these events the Nakba, an Arabic word meaning catastrophe.