Souad Al-Alem was one of the roughly 10,000 people forced to flee the Palestinian town of al-Majdal. It was 1948, she was a young woman\u00a0and Israel\u2019s\u00a0troops were approaching the community\u00a0during the Arab-Israeli war\u00a0in what is now part of the Israeli city of Ashkelon. <\/p>\n
Now in her 90s and living in Gaza, Al-Alem has been forced to run again. <\/p>\n
On October 7, Hamas launched a deadly terror attack against Israel from Gaza, firing thousands of rockets,\u00a0going on a bloody rampage that killed 1,400 people\u00a0and taking more than 220 hostage.\u00a0In retaliation, the Israel Defence Forces have been conducting a massive bombardment campaign against\u00a0what it says are Hamas targets in\u00a0Gaza.\u00a0More than\u00a06,850\u00a0Palestinians have been killed as a result of these strikes, according to information from Hamas-controlled health authorities in Gaza and published by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah. <\/p>\n
Al-Alem is one of the hundreds of thousands of civilians caught up in the war. <\/p>\n
Just 10 miles north of the Gaza border, not much remains of al-Majdal. Once a buzzing market place known for textile manufacturing, al-Majdal was reduced to rubble after the 1948\/49\u00a0war. <\/p>\n
All of its houses are long gone, replaced with modern Israeli buildings that are now part of Ashkelon. Only the old mosque remains standing. Nearby, an empty, overgrown field gives a hint of the size of the former town. <\/p>\n
Some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or\u00a0fled\u00a0their homes following the 1948\/49\u00a0war, representing at least 80 percent of Arabs living in what became Israel. Like Al-Alem,\u00a0more than half\u00a0of those who live in Gaza today are either refugees or their direct descendants. <\/p>\n
Many of those\u00a0displaced\u00a0in 1948 thought that they\u2019d be back home in a few days or weeks. But Israel has never allowed them to return and many have lived in poverty ever since.\u00a0According to\u00a0the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA),\u00a0more than 80% of people in Gaza live in poverty now. <\/p>\n
Palestinians call that episode the Nakba, the Arabic word for\u00a0catastrophe. <\/p>\n
\u201cI lived the Nakba of 1948 and now I am living the Nakba of 2023,\u201d Al-Alem said, sitting in a tent in a makeshift refugee camp\u00a0in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. \u201cThis second one is worse,\u201d she added.\u00a0She said she fled her home amid intense bombing more than 10 days ago and said she hasn\u2019t had a proper meal or bath since then. As a diabetic, she said she was struggling without regular meals and access to her usual medication. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere nothing to use for cleaning our faces and hands and ourselves. We can\u2019t wash or do anything. There is nothing. \u00a0There were toilets, now there aren\u2019t any. When we go to toilets, they are dirty because too many people are using them. I stopped going to them,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
While most of the former\u00a0Arab\u00a0villages and towns are long gone, the collective memory lives on. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing how the Palestinians keep those memories alive. Most of them in the traditional way, from stories told by their fathers and grandfathers,\u201d said Umar al-Ghubari, a Palestinian educator who works for Zochrot. <\/p>\n
A Tel Aviv-based NGO, Zochrot was originally formed by a group of Israeli Jews with a goal to \u201cpromote acknowledgement, responsibility and accountability\u201d for the\u00a0\ufeffemptied\u00a0Palestinian\u00a0villages\u00a0and campaign for the\u00a0right of\u00a0return of these communities. <\/p>\n
The first step is to spread awareness, al-Ghubari said. Zochrot operates in Hebrew, publishing information materials, organizing tours and collecting testimonies. <\/p>\n
Al-Ghubari\u00a0acknowledges that\u00a0Zochrot\u2019s work\u00a0runs counter to the\u00a0mainstream\u00a0Israeli narrative,\u00a0which tends to gloss over the issue of Palestinian expulsions during the war, preferring to highlight the contentious idea that the desert only started \u2018blooming\u2019 once Israel was founded. <\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Israel and its allies including the United States and other Western nations skipped\u00a0\ufeffthe first ever event\u00a0at the United Nations marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba\u00a0\u2013\u00a0coinciding with the 75th anniversary of Israel\u2019s founding. <\/p>\n
The\u00a0Israeli government\u00a0rejects Nakba commemorations,\u00a0with Israel\u2019s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan saying they \u201conly serve to demonize Israel and further push away any chance for reconciliation.\u201d <\/p>\n
Al-Ghubari said that one of Zochrot\u2019s missions is to make Israeli people more aware of the history, however uncomfortable it is. <\/p>\n
But it\u2019s hard going, he said. Zochrot has in the past tried to install information signs at the sites of the destroyed villages. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe put signs up in these locations, but unfortunately, these signs would be removed almost immediately within few hours of few days because some Israelis when they come to that place, they don\u2019t like the idea of that information being there,\u201d he said.\u00a0Al-Ghubari does not know who took the signs down. <\/p>\n
Most people who live in Gaza today still identify as Palestinian refugees and refer to the towns and villages their ancestors were forced to flee as their homes \u2013 even if their families have now lived in the enclave for several generations. <\/p>\n
In 1967, Israel\u00a0captured\u00a0Gaza\u00a0during\u00a0the Six-Day War with Egypt, Jordan and Syria, and held it for nearly 40 years before withdrawing troops and\u00a0\ufeffIsraelis\u00a0settlers in 2005.\u00a0After Hamas took power\u00a0inside\u00a0the enclave\u00a0two years later,\u00a0Israel and Egypt,\u00a0which continued to have full control over entry and exit points to the enclave, including the sea,\u00a0imposed a blockade that critics say transformed\u00a0it\u00a0into \u201cthe world\u2019s largest open-air prison.\u201d <\/p>\n
Taghrid Ebead is only 35, but she too has a strong sense of belonging to al-Majdal. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were evacuated in 1948 to Gaza,\u201d she said. Ebead said she grew up wondering what drove her ancestors to flee al-Majdal, asking herself why they left their home, why they would allow it to happen. <\/p>\n
\u201cI used to say that we will not do it again. We will not repeat it. It\u2019s impossible to do what our families and grandfathers did,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Then IDF leaflets ordering her to evacuate started dropping from the sky, encouraging residents to move south as the Israeli air force ramped up its operation. Amid the constant airstrikes, she decided she had no choice but to leave her home in Gaza City. <\/p>\n
The family of seven fled on foot and ended up in Khan Younis, some 20 miles south of Gaza City. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe faced many difficulties, a lot of shelling everywhere,\u201d she said. \u201cWe came to Khan Younis and here was nothing. The first day I slept on dust and we had no covers. A week has passed and my son is ill. We hope to go back. We have suffered a lot, we can\u2019t cope.\u201d <\/p>\n
She said that now, she finally understands why her ancestors fled their homes. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the fear for our children and destruction and death that made (us) leave. To our children, this will not be history because they are living it, they have seen it,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n
Souad Al-Alem was one of the roughly 10,000 people forced to flee the Palestinian town of al-Majdal. It was 1948, she was a young woman\u00a0and Israel\u2019s\u00a0troops were approaching the community\u00a0during the Arab-Israeli war\u00a0in what is now part of the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Now in her 90s and living in Gaza, Al-Alem has been forced <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10751,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10750","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}