Palestinians mark 76 years of dispossession as a potentially even larger catastrophe unfolds in Gaza

(15 May 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Deir Al Balah, Central Gaza Strip - 14 May 2024
1. Various of hundreds of tents lived in by displaced Palestinians
2. Various of children playing between tents
3. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Um Shadi Shekh Khalil, displaced from Gaza City:
"We lived through the Nakba not just once, we were displaced several times. Palestinian exile, we lived through it not just once, but several times. In 2014 we were displaced, in 2008 we were displaced, in 2022 we were displaced. I was a child in 1967 as well and the circumstances were very difficult."
4. Various of Shekh Khalil sitting with her grandsons outside of their tent
5. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Um Shadi Shekh Khalil, displaced from Gaza City:
"A person does not feel themselves, except in their home. A very bitter reality, and the situation is difficult - a tiring and boring life. We have begun to wish that we would die under the rubble of our homes rather than be abandoned."
6. Various of tents lived in by displaced Palestinians
7. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Mohammad Moussa, displaced from Gaza City:
"Our life is a tragedy, life is non-existent. People have been destroyed. How many martyrs have died? Thousands. Half of the population of Gaza has died, whether martyred or wounded. Gaza has been destroyed. No one is left rich. The rich person has become a beggar in Gaza. All of Gaza has become one class, Israel has taken us back 100 years."
8. Various of tents lived in by displaced Palestinians
STORYLINE:
Palestinians on Wednesday will mark the 76th year of their mass expulsion from what is now Israel, an event that is at the core of their national struggle.
But in many ways, that experience pales in comparison to the calamity now unfolding in Gaza.
Palestinians refer to it as the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe.
Some 700,000 Palestinians - a majority of the prewar population - fled or were driven from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment.
After the war, Israel refused to allow them to return because it would have resulted in a Palestinian majority within its borders.
Instead, they became a seemingly permanent refugee community that now numbers some 6 million, with most living in urban refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
In Gaza, the refugees and their descendants make up around three-quarters of the population.
Israel’s rejection of what Palestinians say is their right of return has been a core grievance in the conflict and was one of the thorniest issues in peace talks that last collapsed 15 years ago.
The refugee camps have always been the main bastions of Palestinian militancy.
Now, many Palestinians fear a repeat of their painful history on an even more cataclysmic scale.
All across Gaza, Palestinians in recent days have been loading up cars and donkey carts or setting out on foot to already overcrowded tent camps as Israel expands its offensive.
The images from several rounds of mass evacuations throughout the seven-month war are strikingly similar to black-and-white photographs from 1948.
The war in Gaza, which was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into Israel, has killed over 35,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, making it by far the deadliest round of fighting in the history of the conflict.
The initial Hamas attack killed some 1,200 Israelis.
The war has forced some 1.7 million Palestinians - around three quarters of the territory’s population - to flee their homes, often multiple times.
Israel has sealed its border.
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