The flight and expulsion of 1948 still determines the lives of many Palestinians today. The devastating effects of the Gaza war are raising fears that the catastrophe could repeat itself.
Dalal al-Naji witnessed the Nakba as a child. The catastrophe, as Palestinians call the flight and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people during the war following the founding of the Israeli state in 1948. The now 86-year-old from Dair al-Balah in the Gaza Strip says that she walked with her parents and her two siblings from her birthplace of Julis, around 30 kilometers northeast of Gaza, to what is now the Gaza Strip. Almost only ruins remained in Julis; today the place is in the Israeli heartland. So close yet so far.
Since fleeing her childhood, the mother of five children has witnessed many bloody wars in the region. However, the current one is “the worst of all,” says the old woman. She is afraid that Israel could force Palestinians in the embattled Gaza Strip to flee to Egypt – fear of a second “Nakba”.
Escape of civilians with white flags brings back memories
Her younger sister, Naema al-Naji, has taken in many internally displaced people from the north of the Gaza Strip in her home in Dair al-Balah. This is where the fighting and Israeli attacks are most intense. The video footage of thousands of civilians with white flags who have been walking for days through a humanitarian corridor from the north to the south declared by Israel has awakened many associations with the “Nakba”. “Israel wants to drive us out again and again and end the Palestinian cause forever,” believes 72-year-old Al-Naji.
Israel repeatedly emphasizes that the evacuation of the more than one million residents of the northern part of the coastal strip is for their own safety. Officially, Israel also says it does not want to permanently reoccupy the Gaza Strip, but only wants to end the rule of the Islamist Hamas. This can no longer be tolerated after the bloody massacre of more than 1,400 Israelis by Hamas terrorists and others on October 7th.
Radical statements fuel fears
But radical statements by Israeli politicians are further fueling the fears of many Gazans. Ariel Kallner, a member of the right-wing conservative Likud party, demanded in an X-Post on the day of the massacre: “A Nakba for the enemy, immediately!” A “new Nakba that dwarfs that of 48”.
Israeli ground troops raised a blue and white Israeli flag on Gaza Beach and sang the Israeli national anthem. Israeli settler leaders have already expressed their desire to rebuild settlements evacuated during the Israeli army’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.
Alleged ideas to temporarily house refugees from the Gaza Strip in North Sinai in Egypt are also reviving a trauma among Palestinians that spans generations. During the “Nakba” in 1948, around 700,000 people fled historic Palestine, which was previously under British mandate. Hundreds of thousands more followed in the 1967 Six-Day War, now known as the “Naksa” (setback).
Palestinian families are now moving in droves along the “corridor” for evacuations that the Israeli army has opened in Gaza for civilians – according to the UN, around 72,000 people since Sunday alone. Israel is continuing its “forced expulsion,” wrote the state-run Egyptian news site “Al-Ahram.” It was a “new Nakba with a different flavor, live on television,” said an opinion piece in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad.
Arab countries not open to more refugees
For Egypt, which controls the only non-Israeli border crossing into Gaza, the refugee scenario poses a whole range of concerns. The security situation in Sinai remains tense after fighting against extremists. Head of state Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is unlikely to want to be seen as a supporter – shortly before a presidential election in Egypt – if the “Palestinian brothers” have to leave their homeland again. The Sinai could also become a “base for terrorist operations against Israel” for groups such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad, said Al-Sisi. Attacks by Israel in Sinai as retaliation cannot be ruled out.
Because it is unclear who will control Gaza, refugees remain in constant fear that they will not be able to return after the war ends. In Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, where many of the nearly six million registered Palestinian refugees live, there is neither political will nor capacity to welcome more.
The fate of millions of refugees appears insoluble
There is still great support for the Palestinians among the population of the Arab world, as mass protests have shown, but there is also a checkered history. In Jordan in 1970, Palestinian militias undermined the state’s sovereignty in the so-called Black September before the army forcibly drove them out. In Lebanon, Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) fighters were a catalyst in the civil war (1975-1990). Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait in 1991 – the trigger was that the PLO had supported the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.
The status of the millions of Palestinians scattered in neighboring countries is probably the longest unresolved refugee issue in modern history. Overall, they probably form the largest community of people who are considered stateless or whose nationality is unclear.
Israel accuses the UN relief agency for Palestine refugees UNRWA and other organizations of artificially perpetuating the problem – by practically “inheriting” refugee status. When the agency began its work in 1950, it said it cared for 750,000 refugees. Today, 5.9 million Palestinians are eligible for UNRWA assistance. Israel rejects a return to their old homeland demanded by the Palestinians because it would destroy the Jewish state. The dispute over return remains one of the most difficult questions in the conflict between the two peoples.
A political solution that many in the region long for appears more distant today. The sisters from Dir el Balah see responsibility for the catastrophic situation not only with Israel, but also with Hamas, which has had sole rule in the Gaza Strip since 2007. “We want to live in security and peace, but neither Israel nor Hamas want to find a solution that allows us to live a normal life,” complains the older sister.