Palestinians around the world marked Nakba Day on May 15, remembering 78 years since the forced mass displacement that helped clear the way for the establishment of Israel. In Gaza, the anniversary landed amid reports that Israel dramatically increased its attacks during April, even as the territory remained under Israeli blockade and occupation.
Nakba Day refers to “the catastrophe” in Arabic, the word many Palestinians use for the 1948 exodus, when about 750,000 Palestinians were violently displaced and dispossessed from hundreds of towns and villages in Palestine. Thousands more were killed during the creation of the state of Israel, and for many Palestinians the day is not only a look back at the past but a reminder of what they say has never really ended.
Muhammad Shehada said Palestinians have survived repeated attempts to erase them. “Israel tried, since 1948 until today, to destroy us as a people, as a group, and they failed at it. Our people are still there, resilient,” he said. He added that the conflict has become more openly brutal. “Now this veneer of civility has fallen off. The mask was taken off. And now it’s a matter of national pride in Israel to brag about annihilating Palestinians,” he said.
Shehada also rejected what he described as the terms being placed before Palestinians now. “The ‘realistic’ proposal that Israel is putting on the table is surrender, capitulate, become fully defenseless, weaponless, and entrust the very army that carried out a genocide against you to be merciful towards you once you are an easier target than you ever were before,” he said. His remarks come as Palestinians mark the anniversary with Gaza under pressure and the broader conflict still escalating after October 7, 2023.
The human toll extends beyond Gaza. UNICEF said Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 70 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank since early last year, a rate it said amounts to around one child killed per week. The agency said another 850 children were injured by Israeli attacks during the past year, underscoring how violence has spread across the occupied territory even outside the current fighting in Gaza.
The anniversary also arrives in a political climate where criticism of Israel remains sharply contested. Israel threatened to file a defamation lawsuit against after it published a column by Nicholas Kristof, a sign of how tightly the public debate over the war and its consequences has been policed.
For Palestinians, Nakba Day has become less a commemoration than a marker of continuity. The original displacement began in 1948, but the source frames the Nakba as an ongoing process, one that has intensified again since October 7, 2023, and sharpened further after the U.S.-brokered ceasefire last October. On this year’s anniversary, the message from Gaza and beyond was blunt: the catastrophe is not over.
