As Israel warns of a potential ground offensive, Palestinians fear that the most painful moment in their history is repeating itself. Although the military has said those who leave can return when hostilities end, many Palestinians remain cautious and concerned.
As Israel intensifies its campaign in the Gaza Strip that began after Hamas attacks on October 7, many Palestinians recall with horror their trauma of 1948, when an estimated 700,000 of them, a majority of the pre-war population, were forcefully displaced from their homes from what is now Israel in the months before and during the war surrounding its establishment as a state. For many Palestinians, this period was the Nakba, or catastrophe.
Over a week ago, Israel’s military ordered some 1 million people to evacuate to the southern part of the besieged territory of Gaza ahead of an expected ground invasion in retaliation for the attack by the ruling Hamas militant group. The United Nations (UN) warned that evacuating almost half of crowded Gaza’s population would be calamitous, and it urged Israel to reverse the unprecedented directive. As airstrikes hammered the territory throughout the day, families in cars, trucks and donkey carts packed with possessions streamed down a main road out of Gaza City, trying to find shelter in the conflict-ridden territory.
Seventy-five years ago, an exodus on a larger scale left around 15,000 Palestinians dead. Israeli military forces expelled at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands and captured 78 per cent of historic Palestine. The remaining 22 per cent was divided into what are now the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip.
Some 530 villages in major Palestinian cities were destroyed and more than 110 men, women and children were killed by members of the pre-Israeli-state Irgun and Stern Gang Zionist militias, in one of the worst massacres the region has witnessed. The fighting continued until January 1949 when an armistice agreement was forged between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria and Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. However, according to a report by Al Jazeera, the newly founded Israeli army committed a number of additional massacres and campaigns of forced displacement even after 1949.
Palestinians became refugees in their countries – Gaza strip and other Arab countries. They were left with almost nothing – from their homes to political leadership. Only a minority of them moved abroad and many were left stateless. Amnesty International documented testimonies of many Palestinian refugees who live in Lebanon and Jordan. One of them, Sara Abu Shaker, 14, chose to pursue her dream of studying medicine even though as a Palestinian, she could never practise as a doctor in Lebanon – discriminatory laws in these countries bar Palestinians from practising over 30 professions including medicine, dentistry, law, architecture and engineering, driving them into abject poverty.
Further, without political representation, they became virtually invisible to the world. Palestinians refer to this calamity as Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic. The Nakba remains a deeply traumatic event in their collective memory and continues to shape their struggle for justice and for their right to return to their homes.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) estimates that there are today 6 million Palestinian refugees living in congested refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, in the Occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and East Jerusalem and rely on UNRWA medical, education facilities, and humanitarian relief to this day, 75 years later.
According to the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 in 1948, as well as the UN Resolution 3236 in 1974, and the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, Palestinians who are considered Palestinian refugees have the "right of return".
However, Israel has not recognised the "right of return" for Palestinians under international law, arguing that it would threaten the country’s Jewish majority. Israel has also denied responsibility for the displacement of Palestinians, pointing out that between 1948 and 1972 around 800,000 Jews were expelled or had to flee from Arab countries like Morocco, Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen.
Palestinians continue to face discrimination today in Israel. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, some 1 million Palestinians have been arrested by Israel since 1948.
Israel has also criminalised the act of commemorating Nakba, which Palestinians across the world mark by holding protests, marches, and events of remembrance to mourn the trauma of their ancestors every year on May 15. The “Nakba Law” authorises Israel’s finance minister to revoke funding from institutions that reject Israel’s character as a 'Jewish state' or mark the country’s Independence Day as a day of mourning.
As Israel gives warnings of a potential ground offensive, Palestinians fear that the most painful moment in their history is repeating itself. Although the military has said those who leave can return when hostilities end, many Palestinians remain cautious and concerned.