The Nakba. It’s a concept that accompanied me from birth until I lived through it myself these past two years.
I was born a refugee in the Khan Younis camp, known by the city’s residents as the largest gathering of refugees expelled from their lands during the Nakba, when Israel was founded in 1948.
Whenever someone asked me my name, it was always followed by: “Are you a refugee or a citizen?”
‘What is a refugee?’
As a child, I would ask: “What is a refugee?”
I attended a school run by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and my documents always had to include proof that I was a refugee.
I received treatment at UNRWA clinics, always needing to bring that refugee card.
I spent a lot of time trying to understand what being a refugee meant. How did my grandparents flee their land in Beit Daras, a village north of the Gaza Strip that no longer exists? How did my grandfather end up in this camp, and why did he choose this place?
Before Israel’s war on Gaza, May 15, or Nakba Day, the day Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, was a unique occasion. Everyone paid attention to it, seeking out people who had lived through it to hear their stories.
When I began working as a journalist in 2015, Nakba Day was one of the events I looked forward to covering. That year, I went along with colleagues to the Shati camp, west of Gaza City.
It would be my first time writing about the Nakba, and my first visit to a refugee camp in 13 years, since we had moved from camp life to village life in al-Fukhari, south of Khan Younis.
When I entered the camp, memories of my childhood in Khan Younis came flooding back: the small, crowded houses, some newly built, others still original structures.
It was nice that the commemoration falls in May, with good weather.
Elderly men and women sat by their doors, just as my grandmother did when I was a child. I used to love sitting with her; she seemed used to open spaces, like her pre-1948 home in Beit Daras.
We sat with elderly women, all over 70. They talked about their homeland, the stability they had in their lands, their simple lives, the food they grew and ate, and the heartbreak of not being able to return.
We met many – from Majdal, Hamama, and al-Jura, all depopulated villages and towns taken over by Israel in 1948. Whenever I met someone from Beit Daras, we’d share memories, and laugh a lot, talking about the maftoul (Palestinian couscous) the town was famous for.
The visit was light-hearted, filled with laughter and nostalgia, despite these people having been forced into camp life after the occupation drove them from their towns in horrific ways.
Displacement
I began to understand those Nakba stories more deeply when my grandfather began to tell me his own story. He became the central character in my Nakba reports every year, until his death in 2021.
He estimated he was about 15 years old at the time. He was already married to my grandmother, and they had a child.
He would describe the scenes as I sat in awe, asking myself: How could the world have stood by silently?
My grandfather told me they had a good life, working their farm, eating from their crops. Each town had a specialty, and they exchanged produce.
Theirs was a simple cuisine, with lots of lentils and bread made from wheat they ground in stone mills. Until that dreadful displacement.
He said the Zionist militias forced them to leave, ordering them to go to nearby Gaza.
My grandfather said he shut the door to his home, took my grandmother and their son – just a few months old – and started walking. Israeli planes hovered overhead, firing at people as if to drive them to move faster.
The baby – my uncle – didn’t survive the journey. My grandfather never wanted to go into the details, he would only say that their son died from the conditions as they fled.
After hours of walking, they reached Khan Younis and, with nowhere else to go, he pitched a tent. Eventually, UNRWA was set up and gave him a home, the one I remember from my childhood. It was so old; I spent years visiting them in that asbestos-roofed house with its aged walls.
That memory of being forced into exile became their wound. Yet, the idea of return, the right to go home, was passed down through generations.
Memories made flesh, blood, and anguish
The Nakba was a memory passed down from the elderly to the young.
But in the war that Israel began waging on Gaza on October 7, 2023, we lived the Nakba.
We were forcibly displaced under threat of weapons and air strikes. We saw our loved ones arrested before our eyes and tortured in prisons. We lived in tents and searched everywhere for basic provisions to save our children.
My grandfather told me they fled under threat of weapons and planes – so did we.
He said they searched for flour, food, and water while trying to protect their children – so are we, right now in the 21st century.
Perhaps in 1948, the media was more primitive. But now, the world watches what’s happening in Gaza in many formats – written, visual, and audio – and yet, nothing has changed.
Never did I imagine I’d live through an existential war – a war that threatens my very presence on my land, just as my grandparents lived through.
The repeated scenes of displacement are so painful. They’re a cycle, one that we have been cursed to live through as Palestinians again and again.
Will history record this as Nakba 2023?
Years from now, will we speak of this Nakba just as we’ve spoken about the original one for 77 years? Will we tell stories, hold commemorations, and hold close memories of the dream of return that has stayed with us since childhood?
Since I realised what it meant to be called a refugee and learned I had a homeland, I’ve been dreaming of returning.
This pain, we can never forget it. I still remember the camp and my life there.
I’ll never forget the moment Israel destroyed my house and made us homeless for two years, 24 years ago.
Now we live our painful days searching for safety, fighting to survive.
We will tell future generations about this war, the war of existence.
We resist hunger, fear, thirst, and pain so we can remain on this land.
