On the 78th Anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba: Israel Continues Its War of Genocide

On May 15, 2026, the Palestinian people commemorate the 78th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, while the Nakba continues in even harsher and more organized forms. What began in 1948 with mass uprooting, forced displacement, the destruction of villages, and the committing of massacres continues today through an open genocide targeting the Palestinian person, land, memory, and future.

The stories of grandfathers and grandmothers about displacement, homelessness, hunger, and fear are no longer mere memories of the past; they have become a daily reality experienced by Palestinians once again. History is repeating itself in a more brutal form, and a new generation is living the Nakba of their forefathers under bombardment, siege, hunger, and recurring displacement.

Living in the tents of the displaced brings back memories of the first refugee camps in Gaza after 1948. The narrow alleys, the biting cold and intense heat, the spread of insects and diseases, the absence of clean water and health services, and the constant fear of death. The tents are no longer just temporary shelters; they have become a living testament to a renewed Nakba and an open wound in the body of Palestine.

I remember what my father used to tell me about what he and my late uncle, Muhammad, experienced during their forced displacement from the village of Burir, located east of Gaza City, 21 kilometers away, and how they would return on the back of a camel to retrieve what the family had stored of wheat to survive. Today, Palestinians are reenacting the same scene; some return to their destroyed homes, or what remains of them, to retrieve simple belongings or to reassure themselves of their memories, but many of them are killed by the occupation's fire, never to return, with no homes or possessions left for them.

My father also used to talk to me about the spread of lice, fleas, and bedbugs among the early refugees, and about the initial failure of international institutions to provide even the minimum care. Later, the UN Relief and Works Agency managed to introduce pesticides, spraying the tents and mud houses with tile roofs. Today, after 78 years, the tragedy is repeated in a more surreal manner; the spread of rodents, insects, and diseases, and the prevention of the entry of medicines and pesticides, amid a systematic siege and starvation affecting over two million people in the Gaza Strip.

Since October 2023, Israel has waged a comprehensive genocide war on the Gaza Strip, resulting in the martyrdom of tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of whom are children and women, and the injury of hundreds of thousands, with more than 80% of the sector's buildings completely or partially destroyed, and the forced displacement of the majority of the population. Furthermore, a suffocating policy of starvation and siege has been imposed, preventing the entry of humanitarian aid, in an attempt to subjugate the population and break their will.

At the same time, Israel continues in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem its policies of effective annexation, settlement expansion, land confiscation, house demolitions, and the displacement of Palestinian communities, escalating settler terrorism under military protection.

These are not separate events, but interconnected episodes of a settler colonial project based on uprooting Palestinians from their land, erasing their national existence, and imposing a system of domination and racial superiority.

Despite the scale of destruction, killing, starvation, and international betrayal, Palestinians continue to uphold their resilience and commitment to their national rights. All instruments of power and terror have failed to break their will or erase their identity. The right of return, the right to self-determination, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state remain fixed rights that do not fade with time.

On the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, it is clearer than ever that the Nakba has not ended, and continues with more advanced and brutal tools. But it is also certain that the Palestinian people, despite all they have endured in terms of displacement, killing, and siege, remain committed to their land, memory, and rights.

Seventy-eight years of Nakba, and Palestine has not fallen from memory, the right of return has not lapsed, and the will of Palestinians has not broken. The fascist occupying state, which has developed its tools of killing and genocide over eight decades, will not be able to erase one unassailable truth: that this people will persist, and that justice, no matter how long it takes, will prevail.