The Nakba: 75 Years on

Overview

As Palestinians mourn the 75th anniversary of what is commonly known as Al-Nakba i.e., the expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in 1948 and the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem, Palestinians still struggle for their freedom, rights, and independence.

The Nakba remains the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is engraved in the hearts and minds of all Palestinians. Since that first wave of displacement, entire generations of Palestinians have been born scattered around the world, but no matter where they live, their call for freedom and self-determination has never ceased. To this date, Palestinians have defied all Zionist and Israeli attempts to force them out of the country; in fact, their numbers have now exceeded that of the Jews.

Despite all Israeli attempts at erasing or distorting their history and memory, despite all political setbacks and failed negotiations, and despite all involvement of the international community providing little but a broad base for continuing oppression and theft of their land, Palestinians remain steadfast and determined to resist occupation. Despite the suffering they have endured for the past 75 years, they have proven that they will not relinquish their historical and legal right of return to their homeland nor their demand that Israel acknowledges its moral and political responsibility for this ongoing tragedy and the gross injustice inflicted on them.

This bulletin is the revised and updated edition of a similar bulletin published by PASSIA in 2018; it presents the Palestinian narrative of the history of the events preceding and surrounding the Nakba and shows that the Nakba was not merely a historical event, but is an ongoing process of Israel’s settler-colonialist strategy, dispossessing indigenous Palestinians and segregating them under Israeli control to this day.