The author looks into the role played by Palestinian intellectuals and poets from the 1948 territory in constructing the Palestinian narrative of the Nakba and explores key themes around which its narrative and its constituent symbols revolve. The paper pays particular attention to the contradictory relationship between intellectuals' discourse of liberation, emancipation and change and the social structure which they call to be emancipated from. The research paper comprises three chapters. To give a picture of the 1948 events, Chapter 1 explores the emergence of the concept of Nakba, its derivative meaning, and its influence on the national subject. Chapter 2 investigates the main metaphors, terms and concepts used by poets to construct a Palestinian narrative of the 1948 events. Finally, Chapter 3 uncovers the relation between gender and nationalism through poetry of the Nakba, assessing the impact of the Nakba on reproducing the values which regulate patriarchal culture.