Palestinians

==="Lost years" (1949–1967)===
After the war, there was a hiatus in Palestinian political activity. Khalidi attributes this to the traumatic events of 1947–49, which included the depopulation of over [[Depopulated Palestinian locations in Israel|400 towns and villages]] and the creation of hundreds of thousands of refugees.<ref name=Khalidi178>Khalidi, 1997, pp. 178–180.</ref> 418 villages had been razed, 46,367 buildings, 123 schools, 1,233 mosques, 8 churches and 68 holy shrines, many with a long history, destroyed by Israeli forces.<ref>Nurhan Abujidi, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=AK_pAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT95 Urbicide in Palestine: Spaces of Oppression and Resilience] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231129193101/https://books.google.com/books?id=AK_pAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT95#v=onepage&q&f=false |date=29 November 2023 }}'', Routledge 2014 p.95.</ref> In addition, Palestinians lost from 1.5 to 2&nbsp;million acres of land, an estimated 150,000 urban and rural homes, and 23,000 commercial structures such as shops and offices.<ref>[[Philip Mattar]], ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=GkbzYoZtaJMC&pg=PA329 The Encyclopedia of the Palestinians] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230320155424/https://books.google.com/books?id=GkbzYoZtaJMC&pg=PA329 |date=20 March 2023 }}'', InfoBase Publishing 2005 p.329.</ref> Recent estimates of the cost to Palestinians in property confiscations by Israel from 1948 onwards has concluded that Palestinians have suffered a net $300&nbsp;billion loss in assets.<ref name=Anderson/>

Those parts of British Mandatory Palestine which did not become part of the newly declared Israeli state were occupied by Egypt or annexed by Jordan. At the [[Jericho Conference]] on 1 December 1948, 2,000 Palestinian delegates supported a resolution calling for "the unification of Palestine and Transjordan as a step toward full Arab unity".<ref>Benvenisti, Meron (1996), ''City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem'', University of California Press, {{ISBN|0-520-20521-9}}. 27</ref> During what Khalidi terms the "lost years" that followed, Palestinians lacked a center of gravity, divided as they were between these countries and others such as Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere.<ref name=Khalidi179>Khalidi, 1997, p. 179.</ref>

In the 1950s, a new generation of Palestinian nationalist groups and movements began to organize clandestinely, stepping out onto the public stage in the 1960s.<ref name=Khalidi180>Khalidi, 1997, p. 180.</ref> The traditional Palestinian elite who had dominated negotiations with the British and the Zionists in the Mandate, and who were largely held responsible for the loss of Palestine, were replaced by these new movements whose recruits generally came from poor to middle-class backgrounds and were often students or recent graduates of universities in [[Cairo]], [[Beirut]] and Damascus.<ref name=Khalidi180/> The potency of the [[pan-Arabism|pan-Arabist]] ideology put forward by [[Gamal Abdel Nasser]]—popular among Palestinians for whom Arabism was already an important component of their identity<ref name=Khalidi182>Khalidi, 1997, p. 182.</ref>—tended to obscure the identities of the separate Arab states it subsumed.<ref name=Khalidi181>Khalidi, 1997, p. 181.</ref>