Gaza (UNA/WAFA) – Citizens in the Gaza Strip are subjected to the harshest forms of injustice and suffering at the hands of the Israeli occupation. However, what is different this time is that the suffering and war coincide with the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, with displacement, eviction, and persecution day and night through bombing, killing, and a war of extermination.
Children, women, men, boys, and even fetuses in their mothers' wombs were martyred, in a scene the modern world has never witnessed, but the people of Gaza lived through it and the world witnessed it with their own eyes. No one moved a finger, and the catastrophe has continued for 77 years and has not yet ended. But the citizens' voices are saying: "Stop the killing, displacement, exodus, and war that pursues us at every moment and in every place, so that we can live in security and peace."
Hajja Afaf Al-Ustad, who lived through both the previous and current Nakba, says: “Although I lived through the horrors of the Nakba in 48 as a child and was fully aware of the killing and displacement of people from their homes and their forced migration from their towns, villages and cities, this does not compare to what has been happening since the beginning of the aggression on the Gaza Strip.”
“I lived through the Nakba, followed by the 1956 war and the 1967 Naksa, in addition to the First Intifada in 1987, and then several wars waged on Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021. All these wars and rounds of escalation and violence against the Palestinian people combined were nothing compared to what we have lived and are living these days,” said the professor, who was displaced from the city of Majdal and settled in Gaza City. “We no longer feel safe, as killing and displacement pursue us until we have begun to live the old Bedouin life of migration and instability, but under the buzz of aircraft, shelling, and gunfire.”
She adds, her wrinkled face telling a thousand stories: “In 48, the Zionist gangs asked people to leave, so they left, escaping death in the hope of a quick return. Everyone left everything they owned, but the Nakba dragged on, and with it the days and years of return. This is similar in terms of displacement these days, but what’s different is the persecution of citizens in their tents and shelters and their killing, so they no longer have a safe place.”
The professor says, "My father, Hajj Hassan Ibrahim, "Abu Fouad," was the mayor of Majdal before the Nakba and one of the town's notables. We lived a life of honor. After our migration to Gaza, he also served as mayor of Gaza. The war and migration affected everyone and did not differentiate between one person and another. Everyone lived a life of displacement, tents, oppression, and death, all of which surrounded them on all sides."
“But this war forced us to flee again and again. Once, we fled to the UNRWA industrial building in Khan Younis, leaving our homes in Gaza. When we tried to protect ourselves in that building, tanks surrounded us. We were forced to leave under the bombardment to head to Rafah on a very cold, rainy day. We spent the night in the open until we were able to set up a tent to live in. After a while, the occupation forces issued an order to evacuate Rafah, so we returned again to pack our belongings and move to the Al-Attar area between Khan Younis and Rafah. The occupation did not let us settle until it pursued us from one place to another, and death was falling on the displaced in their tents in full view of the world.”
“After suffering and displacement that lasted for more than a year and four months, we returned with great difficulty to Gaza to find our homes demolished,” the professor said. “Our suffering increased, and we were doomed to live the rest of our lives in tents. I wish they were safe, because there is no longer a safe place in Gaza. The Israeli bombardment did not distinguish between a tent, a home, or a shelter. Everyone is under the threat of danger and within the range of fire and death.”
She added: “We have been burned by the fire of war, a life of fear and massacres, and no one has felt for us. We have heard about the Holocaust that the Jews were subjected to in the World War, and we have heard its echo in all forums because it concerns the Jews. But in Gaza, every day we live in a holocaust, indeed in a thousand holocausts, and the world watches and does not move.”
The professor added: “The displacement of people from their homes in 1948 lasted for several months, with Israeli planes pursuing people with lava fire as they moved from town to town, dispersing them inside and outside Palestine. At this time, the displacement of residents only took a few hours due to the intensity of the indiscriminate bombing and the belts of fire that destroyed thousands of homes, leaving them with insufficient time to prepare and take their necessary belongings with them.”
She says: “People settled in their tents when things settled down and began to live the new normal lives that had just been decreed for them. But now these days are not like those days because the occupation showed no mercy to the people, persecuted them in their tents, killed them in them, and did not let them settle down. It forced them to flee dozens of times and continues to do so.”
While the septuagenarian Mahmoud Safi says: “I was born in the same month that the Nakba occurred, and they told me that we were forcibly displaced from our land and our city of Majdal under extremely harsh conditions, during which my mother endured intense suffering, as she was exhausted breastfeeding me, until we finally settled in the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, where we remain today.”
“Everything I heard from those who lived through the Nakba and experienced all its details is nothing compared to what we experienced during the year and seven months of genocidal war in Gaza,” he added. “Despite the harshness of the Nakba and the years of displacement and instability that followed, it was more merciful to people than these days, especially since the United Nations provided food and supplies at the time, and there were no crossings closed, torturing people and killing them with hunger like these days, when we fight with hunger in parallel with killing with fire.”
He continued: “Here in Gaza, these are days unlike any we’ve experienced and heard about during the Nakba, the Naksa, and other wars. Hundreds of families were wiped from the civil registry, leaving no one left, and people are dying of hunger, thirst, and dehydration.”
He added: “We lived for years in exile after the 67 setback, and we returned to our homeland to rebuild and develop, but our current catastrophe is unlike any other. It has surpassed the 48 catastrophe in its horror and devastation, and no sane person could have imagined the extent of the ongoing catastrophe, nor do they know when it will end.”
“During the Nakba of 48, the displaced lived in tents, but it was not a permanent settlement for them. The United Nations and UNRWA funded new Palestinian camps, while building mud and brick houses for them. Years later, new projects were established in several areas, and the construction was made of stone and cement. A number of camp residents were transferred to them, but these days are much more difficult. People are still in dilapidated tents, and it is not known when the war will end, nor will the reconstruction, which will take perhaps decades. An entire generation will have passed without having seen Gaza as it was,” he said, hoping that the current ordeal will not last long and that life will return to stability after Gaza is rebuilt by the efforts of its people who have tasted the horrors of the Israeli occupation.
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