The 15th of May marks the forced expulsion and displacement of 700,000 thousand Palestinians during the conflict that created the State of Israel in 1948. Since then, al Nakba (The Catastrophe), as it is known in Arabic, has been engraved in Palestinian collective consciousness as a story of relentless dispossession.
The crimes that were committed in 1948 draw haunting parallels to the action that Israeli forces have been committing in Palestine in since October 7, 2023. This year on the 77th anniversary of al Nakba we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
During the 1948 Nakba, more than 530 towns and villages were destroyed with over 700,000 Palestinians displaced from their homes, villages and cities. Their homes have either been settled and renamed, or left in ruins. They’ve never received compensation for their losses, and have been denied the right to return.
Unfortunately, the atrocities of al Nakba weren’t isolated. Over the decades, Palestinian refugees have faced multiple waves of displacement, with some losing their homes several times. In 1967, some 300,000 Palestinians were displaced following Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories – the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Since then, tens of thousands of others in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) have been made homeless or forcibly displaced again because of Israel’s aggressive land-grabbing and illegal settlement policies, home demolitions and forced evictions.