Nakba Then and Now: A Continuing Catastrophe (image-instagram/y.f.f.p, mahmoudhamda)
May 15th marks Nakba Day, the day when Palestinians commemorate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948. This year, when the world came together to mark Nakba Day, at least 115 Palestinians, mostly women and children, were killed in Israeli strikes across the besieged land of Gaza.
During the 1948 Nakba, over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes. Since 2023, more than 1.9 million have faced the same fate, highlighting the ongoing nature of Palestinian displacement. Though the events are separated by decades, the scale of devastation in both events reveals a catastrophe far worse than one could ever have imagined.
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Eighty-five-year-old Mohammed Shahal Mellous, a displaced Palestinian who lived through the Nakba, while speaking to Al Jazeera, said, “What we are living through now is worse than any previous catastrophe, even the Nakba of 1948.”
Apart from relentless bombing, Israel has been blocking aid from entering Gaza for over two months, depriving children of food and water. Almost all of Gaza’s population, that is, over 2 million Palestinians, depends on aid for survival. On Thursday alone, at least 61 people were killed overnight in a barrage attack on the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, according to local health officials. In Jabalia in northern Gaza, an Israeli strike on Al-Tawbah Medical Clinic killed at least 15 people and wounded several others, the health ministry said.
Despite being a war crime, the bombing of hospitals has been a recurring occurrence since October 7. The Israeli army has targeted three hospitals in north and south Gaza: Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, the Indonesian Hospital in Khan Younis, and the European Hospital.
The warplanes had targeted nine houses without any prior warning in Khan Younis, completely wiping out entire families. The whole scene in the besieged strip had become chaotic as civilians are forced to flee repeatedly following evacuation orders.
“The Nakba never ended — it just continues,” says Moamen Al Sherbini, a resident of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. “Our lives have become one long Nakba — losing loved ones, our homes destroyed, our livelihoods gone,” he told AFP.
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When the people around the world commemorate horrific tragedies such as the Holocaust, genocides in Rwanda, and many more, to ensure they are never repeated, Palestinians on May 15th continue to live through a ‘modern Nakba’, even as the wounds of 1948 remain unhealed.
