Millions of Palestinians celebrate 78 years since the Nakba | Israel-Palestine War News

Millions of Palestinians are marking the 78th anniversary of the Nakba – Arabic for “catastrophe” – a word that refers to the expulsion and flight of approximately 750,000 Palestinians from their homes during the 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel.

Friday marks the third anniversary of the Nakba since Israel’s war on Gaza began, and it comes as more than 2 million besieged people have fled their homes and been confined to a small part of their territory.

Six months after the October ceasefire, Gazans are less than half of the 40-kilometer (25-mile) stretch of the Mediterranean Sea, encircled by an Israeli-controlled enclave that encircles the entire strip.

The Nakba refers to the systematic dispossession and displacement of the Palestinian people between 1947 and 1949, when Zionist forces occupied cities and towns that became the state of Israel.

Historians estimate that about 750,000 Palestinians – about a third of the population at the time – were forced to leave their homes, and more than 400 villages and neighboring villages were destroyed or destroyed to make way for new Jewish immigrants.

Hundreds of thousands of displaced people now live in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza and across the region, including Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Many still keep keys, documents and documents to the houses that are now called Israel, passing them down from generation to generation as symbols of their migration and future return.

Palestinian refugees continue to demand the right to return to the towns and villages from which they or their family members were expelled.

This “right of return”, enshrined in UN General Assembly Resolution 194, remains one of the main unresolved issues in the ongoing negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

For many Palestinians, the ongoing war in Gaza and their resettlement across the city confirm their belief that the Nakba is not history but an ongoing process of dispossession.

As they commemorate 78 years, freedom fighters and survivors say their memory is a memory and a reaffirmation of their demand for justice, return and self-determination.