On May 15th Palestinians and their allies around the world mark the anniversary of their disposssession, the Nakba ( Catastrophe in Arabic) a poignant reminder of the forced displacement in 1948.of more than 750,000 Palestinians, about half of the Arab population in Palestine at that time, who were forced out of their homes and lands and saw Palestinian villages wiped off the map in places like Yassin, Lydda, Tantura by the hands of Zionist para-military groups like Haganah, that later formed the core of the Israeli Defense Force, Ergun and the Stern Gang. to establish the state of Israel. Events like this are at the core of the Palestinan peoples national struggle. But in many ways, that experience pales in comparison to the calamity now unfolding in Gaza.
The 1948 founding of Israel was founded with the Nakba, a series of atrocities that ethnically cleansed Palestinians from their homeland. During Israel's "war of independence," Palestinians were driven from their homes, never to be allowed to return. Hundreds of towns were razed; villagers were massacred. Their very existence on the land was nearly wiped from history as Israel built new towns over the ruins. This devastating event is given almost no attention in history books or by the mainstream news media but is essential in understanding the ongoing violence in Israel-Palestine and the Middle East in general.
Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the establishment of the Palestine Mandate, the British colonial power began implementing its plan of creating a Jewish state on Palestinian land. At the same time, the Zionist movement was lobbying Western powers to support the mass migration of Jews to Palestine and recognize a Jewish claim to the land. In 1917, the Balfour Declaration declared British support for a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, and that's how the Day of Nakba officially began.
The notorious declaration was made in a letter written by Britain's then-Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, to Baron Rothschild, a leader of the British Zionist movement. The letter was endorsed by Britain's then-Prime Minister David Lloyd George..The letter stated the British would "use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object". For Zionists, this was a clear victory.
The vast majority of Palestinian refugees, both those outside the 1949 armistice lines and those internally displaced, were barred by the newly declared state of Israel from their right to return to their homes or the reclaiming of their property, and in doing so Israel violated international law. It is the defining event that formed and solidified the Palestinian liberation struggle.
To understand the Nakba is to first confront its sheer scale and totality. Before the Nakba there was a large, deeply rooted, and essentially ancient Arab society in most of what, within a few months, became the Jewish state of Israel. In effect, one day it was there, as it had been for living memory, and the next day it was gone. An entire society, with the exception of relatively small groups in a few places, simply vanished.
After World War I, the League of Nations broke the Ottoman Empire up into territories assigned to different colonial powers. The lands that today constitute Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories were placed under British rule, but with two explicit and incompatible purposes: Britain was already committed to supporting the recently established Zionist movement that sought to create “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.
Then in Britain came the notorious 1917 Balfour Declaration and the Palestine mandate, in which the overwhelming Palestinian majority was simply referred to as “existing non-Jewish communities,” with “civil and religious rights,” but not political ones.
With the Balfour Declaration, the government of the time was seeking Jewish support for its war efforts, and the Zionist push for a homeland for Jews, which was becoming an emerging political force. In 1917, Jews constituted 10% of the population, the rest were Arabs. Yet Britain recognised the national rights of a tiny minority and denied it to the majority This was a classic colonial document which totally disregarded the rights and aspirations of the indigenous population. In the words of Jewish writer Arthur Koestler: “One nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.”
It was a shock to the Arab world, which had not been consulted and had received promises of independence of its own in the post-war break up of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The Palestinians have always condemned the declaration, which they refer to as the "Balfour promise" saying Britain was giving away land it did not own.
The Balfour Declaration constituted a dangerous historical precedent and a blatant breach of all international laws and norms, and this act of the British Empire to “give” the land of another people for colonial settlement created the conditions for countless atrocities against the Palestinian people. Balfour, in a 1919 confidential memo, wrote:
“Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far greater import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land”
The discriminatory language used by Sir Arthur Balfour and seen in the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate reveal the prejudiced rational behind British foreign policy in Palestine. A month after the Balfour Declaration on 2 December 1917, the British army occupied Jerusalem. In 1923, the British Mandate for Palestine came into effect, and included the entire text of the Balfour Declaration. Through the Mandate, Britain would go on to rule Palestine for three decades.
As a result of all of this the Palestinian people were denied the right to independence and statehood, and were treated as refugees in their own land. The Nakba resulted in the destruction of much of Palestinian society and much of the Arab landscape was obliterated by the Zionist state. And in the post 1948 period the Palestinians became second class citizens, subject to a system of military occupation by a government that confiscated the bulk of their lands.
Even the word 'Nakba' was banned by the Israeli Minister of Education in 2009, and was removed from school textbooks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayah said at the time that the word was tantamount to spreading propoganda against Israel. But the word Nakba is the term that about a fifth of Israel's population, the Palestinians use to describe this day.
The influx of Zionists to Palestine, supported by the British, was however was met with fierce Palestinian resistance and is very important to note that the Palestinian leadership in Al-Quds at the time insisted on continuing negotiations with the British to resolve the simmering tensions, Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam, a Syrian leader living in Haifa since 1922, began calling for resistance against the British and the Zionists. In 1935, Al-Qassam was surrounded by British forces and killed along with some of his men. His resistance inspired many Palestinians.
By 1936, an Arab resistance erupted against British imperialism and Zionist settler colonialism and by 1939, the Palestinians found themselves fighting two enemies: British colonial forces and Zionist militia groups.
And although the British had backed mass Jewish immigration to Palestine, the colonial power began to limit the number of Jews arriving in the country in an attempt to quell Arab unrest.This new limit on immigration upset the Zionists and they launched a series of terrorist attacks on British authorities to drive them out, while at the same time the Zionists continued to further advance their dream of creating a Jewish state on Palestinian land.
After the war, Israel refused to allow them the right to return because it says 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 slum-like 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 Palestinians’ 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. 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 Zionist strategy of expelling Palestinians from their land was a slow and deliberate process. According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, Zionist leaders and military commanders met regularly from March 1947 to March 1948, when they finalized plans to ethnically cleanse Palestine. As Zionist attacks on the British and Arabs escalated, the British decided to hand over their responsibility for Palestine to the newly founded United Nations.
In November 1947, the UN General Assembly proposed a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab one. Jews in Palestine only constituted one-third of the population - most of whom had arrived from Europe a few years earlier - and only retained control of less than 5.5 percent of historic Palestine. Yet under the UN proposal, they were allocated 55 percent of the land. The Palestinians and their Arab allies rejected the proposal. The Zionist message was simple: Leave the land or be killed. The Zionist movement accepted all this on the grounds that it legitimized the idea of a Jewish state on Arab land. But they did not agree to the proposed borders and campaigned to conquer even more of historic Palestine.
As the date (May 14, 1948) selected by the British for their Palestine Mandate to expire approached, Zionist forces hastened their efforts to seize Palestinian land. In April 1948, the Zionists captured Haifa, one of the biggest Palestinian cities, and subsequently set their eyes on Jaffa. On the same day, British forces formally withdrew, and David Ben-Gurion, then-head of the Zionist Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the state of Israel. Overnight, the Palestinians became stateless. The world’s two great powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, immediately recognized Israel.
As the Zionists continued their ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinians, war broke out between neighboring Arab countries and the new Zionist state. The UN appointed Swedish diplomat, Folke Bernadotte, as its mediator in Palestine. He recognized the plight of the Palestinians and attempted to address their suffering. His efforts to bring about a peaceful solution and halt to the ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign ended when he was assassinated by the Zionists in September 1948.
Nevertheless the UN continued to push for an armistice deal between Israel and those Arab countries. Bernadotte was replaced by his American deputy, Ralph Bunche. Negotiations led by Bunche between Israel and the Arab states resulted in the latter conceding even more Palestinian land to the newly founded Zionist state. In May 1949, Israel was admitted to the UN, and its grip over 78 percent of historic Palestine was consolidated. The remaining 22 percent became known as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Israel was established by means of brutal massacres that were documented even by Israeli historians (Deir Yassin, Kafr Qasim, Tantura, etc.), through ethnic cleansing, and an attempt to erase Palestinians both from their land and global collective memory. Israel destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages and changed the names of other cities and villages to similar, Hebrew names. Israel’s policy of denying self-determination to Palestinians in the West Bank is understood as an occupation; but in fact, this denial of self-determination over natural, cultural, and economic resources and repression of Palestinians’ individual rights are part of daily life wherever you go in Palestine.
This is the Palestinian peoples history and it is essential we should be allowed to talked about. It is it not wrong to question, when other regimes oppress, we question them too, we have a duty to criticise and condemn, when fundamental freedoms and rights are violated. Any state that acts aggressively is open to criticism. All human beings are entitled to human rights.76 years later over 7 million Palestinians live as refugees or exiles, and are still denied the right to return to the land from which they, or their family, were forcibly expelled. A right which is enshrined in international law. In May 1949, Israel was admitted to the UN, and its grip over 78 percent of historic Palestine was consolidated. The remaining 22 percent became known as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
This period of time is what we remember today, and also now marks the anniversary of those killed during the Great Return March in Gaza in 2019. Thousands of Palestinians, stuck in the blockaded Gaza strip, initiated protests that started in Gaza as a way to draw attention to the living conditions in Gaza, where currently more than 1.3 million Palestinian refugees live, but more importantly as a march for the right of return.
This Great March characterized the use of peaceful activism by Palestinian citizens since the early 2000s. These mobilizations aim to defend land rights, rights to resources, mobility through non-violence and sometimes innovative actions to attract international attention demanding their right to return to their homes from which they were expelled in 1948. They were also condemning the continued occupation and siege. Hundreds of people were killed during these marches, including children, disabled protesters, journalists and paramedics.
There is no peace in stolen lands, especially when people still cry for liberation and the right to return to their lands. The fact is the Nakba never ended. It continues every day as Palestinians are evicted from their homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank to be replaced by illegal Jewish-only settlements. It continues as Israel’s occupation obstructs and severely restricts Palestinians’ attainment of rights and fundamental freedoms, including: the right to life, the right to liberty and security of person, and their right to an adequate standard of living.
Today we are witnessing Israel engage in ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza on an even larger, more violent scale. In the aftermath of October 7th, a second Nakba has been unfolding in Gaza before our eyes, with over 35,000 Palestinians killed. Of the 2.2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, 1.9 million people have been forcibly displaced and many of their homes have been destroyed by Israel's brutal attacks.
That is well over twice the number that fled before and during the 1948 war. We are witnessing the mass displacement and exodus trails of refugees marching on foot, under constant bombardment and intensifying siege, leaving behind destroyed homes and lives. The civilian massacres, happening daily and hourly with the total destruction of Palestinian life, culture, and society. The razed streets of Gaza, filled with rubble and reeking of blood and trampled by heartbroken survivors. The bodies of dead children strewn in the streets and under the rubble.
Israel rejected a ceasefire deal and began a full-scale assault on the civilians in Rafah. Roughly 1.3 million displaced Palestinians are currently sheltering in Rafah, a city built to host only 300,000, and over 1 million Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing catastrophic food insecurity and acute starvation. For Palestinians, the violence and mass displacement brings back memories of 1948 but indeed the Nakba never ended, it has continued for the past 76 years.
The Rafah Crossing has been closed, and aid has been cut off, as Israeli Forces escalate their ground incursion into Rafah, putting the lives of over half of Gaza’s population at risk. 100,000 people have been told to evacuate eastern Rafah by Israeli Forces. The areas that citizens are being told to evacuate to lack the most basic standards for safe and dignified living.
Again and again, Palestinians have asked: “Where are we supposed to go?” At the same time, settler violence has escalated in the West Bank, expelling more than 1,000 Palestinians from their homes since October. The dispossession of the present resonates painfully with the exile of the past.
The international community is strongly opposed to any forced mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza , an idea embraced by far-right members of the Israeli government, who refer to it as “voluntary emigration.” Israel has long called for the refugees of 1948 to be absorbed into host countries, saying that calls for their return are unrealistic and would endanger its existence as a Jewish-majority state. It points to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who came to Israel from Arab countries during the turmoil following its establishment, though few of them want to return.
Even if Palestinians are not expelled from Gaza en masse, many fear that they will never be able to return to their homes or that the destruction wreaked on the territory will make it impossible to live there. A recent UN estimate said it would take until 2040 to rebuild destroyed homes.
In Gaza, Israel has unleashed one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history, at times dropping 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs on dense, residential areas. Entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to wastelands of rubble and plowed-up roads, many littered with unexploded bombs.
The World Bank estimates that $18.5 billion in damage has been inflicted on Gaza, roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of the entire Palestinian territories in 2022. And that was in January, in the early days of Israel’s devastating ground operations in Khan Younis and before it went into Rafah.
Even before the war, many Palestinians spoke of an ongoing Nakba, in which Israel gradually forces them out of Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories it captured during the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for a future state. They point to home demolitions, settlement construction and other discriminatory policies that long predate the war, and which major rights groups say amount to apartheid, allegations Israel denies.
Palestinians still have no state and no equality, Refugee camps still exist all over the world and a majority of Palestinians live in the diaspora and Palestine is occupied in the most brutal way possible.
For the nearly six million Palestinians who live between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Nakba remains an ongoing process, as Israel uses a range of tools to restrict their livelihoods. Against their will the Nabka has divided the Palestinian people between Gaza and the West Bank. Still searching for justice and dignity who despite the international attention that the Nakba has received over the years, the state of Israel to this day has not yet recognized the Nakba, nor their responsibility for what happened in 1948.
The right of return for Palestine refugees is a right guaranteed by international law and enshrined in UN General Assembly resolution 194. Knowing that the displacement of Palestinians is still being practiced by Israel today in the West Bank and Gaza, the question of the ongoing Nakba needs to be addressed to achieve justice and peace in the region. The right for Palestinian refugees to return to their land must be the precondition for a dialogue for peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine.
The development of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine is deemed a breach of international law, and thus by doing business in these settlements, many international companies are contributing to the economic viability of settlements and are normalising Israeli annexation of Palestinian land, and aiding in promoting discrimination, oppression and injustice.
As a result the Nakba still reverberates today because Al Nakba is constant and continuing, felt through all aspects of Palestinian life, whether in Israel. the Occupied Territories, the refugees camps, or even in settled Palestinian communities abroad. The Nabka is not a static event, but rather an ongoing reality for Palestinians. The Nakba is felt each time a Palestinian family is forcibly removed from their home. The Nakba is felt each year that the crushing siege on Gaza continues, and with each deadly Israeli air strike.
Today, as we observe the sad sombre event of the Nakba lets be more determined than ever to stand up to Israeli policies of apartheid. It is more important than ever that the international community keep defending Palestinian human rights, support Palestinian protests against forced housing demolitions and land theft and put real pressure on Israel to end its occupation and comply with international law. To take all measures within international law to hold Israel accountable for its ongoing strategy resulting in ongoing human rights violations and international crimes committed against the Palestinian People, including forcible transfer, colonization and apartheid.
The ongoing occupation of Palestinian land also makes the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaigns all the more urgent and necessary. Lets remember that Palestinians will never to give up and be content to mourn the ghost of Palestine. They still belong to their land, and though time drifts, for the Palestinians their memory is never erased, still proudly belonging to the land of their ancestors, where their hearts and minds can never leave. It is time for the leaders of the world to understand that there is no homeland for the Palestinians except Palestine.
The crimes that were committed in 1948 draw haunting parallels to the actions that Israeli forces have been committing in Palestine in recent months but let's also remember today that the Palestinians will remains unbroken, lets continue to stand with them and keep demanding that they are allowed to move freely again in their own land and are given keep back the dignity and respect and basic rights that they all deserve as human beings and to assert the right of the Palestinian people, as a whole, to self-determination, which includes the right to permanent sovereignty over natural wealth and resources and the right of return of Palestinian refugees, in order to achieve justice and durable peace for the Palestinian People.
The Palestinian people, over more than a hundred years, have proven that they are a people that can’t be abolished and uprooted. Palestinian steadfastness and determination have always been a source of inspiration for many national liberation movements. Today, Gaza embodies another symbol of the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and their adherence to their rights, freedom, and dignity—despite the brutality of the genocide committed by Israel against them.
The international community faces a pivotal moment today to correct the historical wrong committed against the Palestinian people. Palestinians have called today on British workers to take action to support their struggle against Israel’s system of oppression. On Nakba Day join the workplace day of action for Palestine:
76 years from the Nabka and its horrors first happening Israel has surpassed itself annihilating much if the Strip and committing it's cruellest, most inhumane, savage crimes yet. It's time they were held accountable. This was never about hostages. This has been about total annihilation of the Palestinian people.
Today let’s send a strong message of solidarity to Palestine and thePalestinian people suffering! We cannot be silent in the face of an ongoing genocide. Lets keep calling for a permanent ceasefire, stand with Palestine struggling for freedom, justice, equality and return and call for an end to the occupation.Pressure governments to impose immediate unilateral and multilateral lawful sanctions against Israel, starting with a military-security embargo, as called for by the UN Human Rights Council and dozens of UN human rights experts.
Every day of impunity granted to apartheid Israel brings further devastating consequences to Indigenous Palestinians and to what’s left of international law’s credibility. Ceasefire is the bare minimum; today is a day for justice and liberation. Free Free Palestine!
