Millions of Palestinians on May 15 marked the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, referring to the mass expulsion and flight of some 750,000 Palestinians from what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.
It was the third commemoration of the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” since the war in Gaza began.
The village, al-Joura, where Yusuf Abu Hamam’s family ended up , and where he spent most of his life, now lies also largely in ruins.
Buildings in the Shati Camp in the northern Gaza Strip have been razed and wrecked by Israeli bombardment and demolitions during the war.
The 78-year-old Abu Hamam, one of a dwindling number of Nakba survivors, told the Associted Press the current war is an even greater catastrophe.
More than six months after an October ceasefire, he and the rest of Gaza’s more than 2 million people are now crammed into less than half of the 25-mile-long strip along the Mediterranean coast, surrounded by an Israeli-controlled zone encompassing the rest of the territory.
“There is no country left,” Abu Hamam said, speaking next to his home, which was heavily damaged by Israeli shelling earlier in the war. “A square kilometer and a half extending from the sea, this is what we are living in … It’s indescribable, unbearable.”
For Palestinians, the Nakba meant the loss of most of their homeland. Some 80 percent of the Palestinians who lived in the area that became Israel were driven from their homes by forces of the nascent state before and during the war.
The ancestors of Ne’man Abu Jarad and his wife, Majida , were already living in what would become the Gaza Strip in 1948. They both recall stories from their families about refugees streaming in by foot from areas further north, like the village Abu Hamam came from.
Though they avoided the original Nakba, there was no escaping from what Majida now calls “our Nakba.”
Their hometown has been wiped off the map. Over the past year, Israeli bulldozers and controlled detonations have razed nearly every building in the northern Gaza towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun. A new Israeli military base stands about 700 meters (765 yards) from where the Abu Jarads’ house once stood, according to satellite photos.
“The Nakba of ’48, I don’t think it can be compared to our Nakba,” Majida said. “In ’48, they say people were displaced once and settled in one place, and they are still there until now. But our Nakba, honestly, is more severe because our displacement has happened multiple times. There is no stability.”
