Whereas the United Nations General Assembly recommended on November 29, 1947, to partition Palestine into two states against the wishes of Palestine’s majority indigenous inhabitants; Whereas this partition plan nevertheless provided for the Full protection for the rights and interests of minorities, including the protection of the linguistic, religious and ethnic rights of the peoples and respect for their cultures, and full equality of all citizens with regard to political, civil and religious matters ; Whereas before the State of Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, there were already between 250,000 to 300,000 Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled from their homes often after attacks by Zionist militias on major Palestinian cities and villages; Whereas by the time the war ended with the signing of armistice agreements between Israel and neighboring Arab countries in 1949, establishing Israel’s sovereignty over 78 percent of Palestine, and, in the process, conquering an additional 23 percent of Palestine beyond those areas allocated to the Jewish state under the partition plan, there were at least 750,000 Palestinian refugees (roughly 75 percent of the indigenous population that had lived in areas that became Israel); Whereas, by 1949, Israel had depopulated more than 400 Palestinian villages and cities, often demolishing all structures and planting forests over them; Whereas Palestinians refer to this experience of uprooting, dispossession, and refugeedom as the Nakba (meaning catastrophe in English); Whereas the United States knew of the scale and magnitude of the Palestine refugee crisis as it unfolded, as is documented in an October 1948 telegram to the President and Secretary of State from the Embassy of the United States to Israel, warning that the Arab Refugee tragedy is rapidly reaching catastrophic proportions and should be treated as a disaster