I am living my own Nakba
A Palestinian boy stands on the rubble of a house destroyed by the Israeli army in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on 7 October 2024
Asem Al Jerjawi writes in Al Jazeera on 22 December 2024:
My grandfather, Hamdi, was just eight when his family fled Bir al-Sabaa, a town in southern Palestine once known for its fertile land and agricultural life. His father, Abdelraouf, was a farmer who owned nearly 1,000 dunams of land and cultivated wheat, selling the harvest to merchants in Gaza. The family had a happy and comfortable life.
In October 1948, several months after European-Zionist forces had proclaimed the creation of Israel, Israeli troops attacked Bir al-Sabaa, forcing thousands of Palestinians, including my grandfather’s family, to flee under the threat of being massacred.
“We fled Bir al-Sabaa when the militias arrived,” my grandfather often told me. “My father thought it would only be temporary. We left our home, land and animals behind, thinking we’d return. But that never happened.”
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Seventy-five years after my grandfather’s experience of painful displacement, sorrow, and a struggle to survive, my family and I fell victim to the Nakba as well.
At 4am on October 13, 2023, my mother’s phone rang. We were all sleeping in one room of our home in the Remal neighbourhood of Gaza City, trying to find comfort from the relentless sound of drones and warplanes overhead. The phone woke us all up. It was a prerecorded message from the Israeli military warning us that our home was in a danger zone, and we were being ordered to move south. Fear gripped us as we ran outside, only to see Israeli leaflets scattered everywhere with the same warning. We had no choice but to pack some clothes and some bedding and flee.