Another Take: Is a ‘new Nakba’ happening in Gaza?
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A new UN report accuses Israel of committing genocidal acts in Gaza and the West Bank by systematically destroying maternal and reproductive healthcare facilities, and even using sexual abuse as a weapon. Despite these conditions, Palestinians in Gaza refuse to leave, but US President Donald Trump insists on displacing them.

According to the Associated Press, his administration and Israel have approached three East African governments about relocating Palestinians from Gaza there. If such displacement happens, it wouldn't be the first time.

In 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were violently displaced in what became known as the Nakba, the catastrophe. Al Jazeera journalist Maram Hameed, who is based in Gaza, told us the story of her family's displacement in 1948. This history came full circle when her own home was bombed in Israel's latest war on Gaza.

Here's that episode now, but remember, none of the dates or other references have changed from May 15, 2023, when it originally aired. Madame Hommade is a reporter for Al Jazeera in Gaza. She was born and raised there. Her seven-year-old daughter, too. But if you ask her where her home is, Gaza's not what she would say. Instead, she talks fondly about a city about 50 kilometers north.

But Maram has never stepped foot in Ashdod. Her family lost their home there in 1948 as the State of Israel was created.

War broke out between Palestinian Arabs and armed Zionist groups. From 1947 to 1949, Zionist forces destroyed more than 78% of historic Palestine. More than 530 main Palestinian villages were destroyed by Jewish paramilitary forces. Entire populations were driven out of their homes. The establishment of the State of Israel displaced an estimated 750,000 Palestinians.

In Arabic, people call it a "nakba," which means "the catastrophe." So, Merham's family, like many others, became refugees in Gaza. But in the decades since, that refuge has turned into a place of misery. Two million Palestinians live in what has been described as the world's largest open-air prison.

So 75 years after the first Nakba, is a new generation facing another catastrophe in Gaza? I'm Malika Pilal, and this is The Take. The Take

So, Maram, we're marking 75 years since the Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcefully expelled from their homeland during the events surrounding the establishment of the State of Israel. Your family lost their home during this period. What did you grow up hearing about the Nakba?

Yeah, actually, the Nakba is one of the major events that we have been raised marking every year since we were children in the schools and have these celebrations and these, you know, demonstrations across the Gaza Strip.

It's a special and a memorable day for the Palestinians, especially the refugees. Refugees percentage in the Gaza Strip stands at 70% of the population here.

For myself, like, I do remember my grandfather who was, you know, talking about our original village that they were kicked out from in 1948. They were practicing farming and we have good living conditions comparing to what happened, you know. The politics.

The port city of Jaffa was once described as the heart of Palestine. It was the main trading and commercial center and hub for Palestinian art, theater and cinema.

They were moving easily between the villages from Jaffa to Haifa to Esdou to Barbara to other Palestinian villages without any restrictions and without being stuck in your area. And how the life was simple and was open for all the people living there.

So there's a story popular in your family about what happened when he had to flee and he had his two daughters on his shoulders. What was that like? What did they go through?

After the Nakba, when they kicked out from their lands, when they heard about the Israeli gangs attacking the villages, he told us that he was seeing his relatives, his neighbors were leaving the village. So he packed his belongings and he told my grandma to prepare herself to leave.

And at the time they were having only two of my aunties. They were under three years old and so they were just, you know, kids. So he had to put both of my aunties on his shoulders, one on the right and one on the left. So he recounted that Israeli gangs were firing rockets or missiles, bombs. Sounds of bullets were heard.

So my aunties were just married children. They were peeing on his shoulder. He didn't have a chance to stop. He was just running, running, allowing them to do anything.

I can't forget this story because maybe when we were children, we were laughing at the story and we were like, oh my God, this is very funny or something like this. But when I grow up, I realize how it was difficult for them, how it was, you know, the amount of fear, the amount of terror.

They were just fleeing and running for three continuous days until they arrived in Gaza and started the life of being refugees.

They were not expecting to go that long, you know. They were just, you know, thinking that they would be back after two weeks, you know, at the maximum. But they ended up like, you know, establishing a new life in the Gaza Strip and just calling for the right of return until they died.

So, Maram, you were born and raised in a refugee camp in Gaza, and you've been covering the region as a journalist for several years. You've said that the economic and living conditions are creating a new Nakba for the younger generations of Palestinians. What is happening in Gaza that makes you describe it like that?

What is happening in Gaza from 2007, we have the blockade that is imposed on the people and it's an ongoing blockade for 16 years and experiencing that every day. Israel has imposed a full siege on the enclave. It strictly controls everyone and everything going in or out.

living under the Israeli blockade will create a new Nakba for us. The new Nakba experienced by the new generation in the Gaza Strip is about, you know, being deprived of the future.

Our grandparents were deprived of their past, of their, you know, original lands, of their rights in their lands. And, you know, new generations of people born and raised under the blockade, we are deprived of building our future and future.

Economists estimate that almost half its population is unemployed. With youth unemployment at 70%, the situation for the young is desperate.

If the first Nakba took away the land of Palestinians, what do you think this new Nakba is taking away?

It steals the future. It steals the dreams of Palestinian generations. It steals the ambitions of people. It steals the determination of the young generation and their ability to continue their lives and also their faith.

So we're talking to you on the same day that Gaza was hit by Israeli airstrikes. Israel continuing to launch airstrikes on Gaza. Palestinian media say most of the victims are women and children. And this follows another escalation in violence between Israel and Hamas the week before over the death of Palestinian prisoner Hazar Adnan in Israeli military custody. Are people bracing themselves for more fighting right now?

You know, this is how the life exactly looks like in Gaza. This is our situation. Like every week, every two weeks, we have an escalation in Gaza. We have an attack. We woke up to something unplanned or unexpected. I can't plan for anything. I can't organize my life the way I want, how I want my life to look like. I can't.

After the break, how the new Nakba generation sees the future very differently from the older generation of survivors. Get your news in less than three minutes, three times per day with the Al Jazeera news updates. Just ask your home device to play the news by Al Jazeera or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. So, Madam, ahead of this anniversary, you interviewed Palestinians in Gaza who lived through the Nakba in 1948.

For the elderlies, they wait this day to recount and to recall back the good memories and the heydays of their life before. They just feel it's a space for them to express themselves. And they still stick to their right of return. And they are still dreaming of going back to visit their homes that they were kicked out of from.

This time it was my first time to hear the opinion of those elderlies about how they feel about their grandchildren who are suffering in Gaza and how they compare the life of people before Nakba with the life of people after Nakba and the new generation. And surprisingly, all those elderlies were feeling sad about the future of their grandchildren.

And as if to illustrate just how uncertain things can be in Gaza, the electricity suddenly caught out in the middle of our conversation. Most of them are just planning to leave and to seek a life after, to seek a life. Okay, the power cut. Okay, a power cut, no problem. Do power cuts happen often, Mara? Yeah, often, very often. It's very normal.

While Al Jazeera's office generator kicked in right away, Gazans at home are used to waiting hours for services. This constant struggle for basic survival has divided some families. Maram spoke to a grandfather and his grandson about how they see their future in Gaza. When I was in Gaza, I was a farmer.

The grandfather was trying to convince his son with the value to stick to your homeland, to stick to your city and to build your future here and not to leave your country. His talk was based on his painful experience of being kicked out from the original homeland. But at the same time, the grandson was responding that I'm living here as a prisoner. I can't live my life. I can't build my future.

If you knock the door of every family in Gaza, you could see three to four graduates in Gaza who are jobless and they are just, you know, living in misery because of the situation. So the grandson was insisting on immigration and leaving Gaza and leaving the homeland. And the grandfather was trying to convince him to stay.

I could see both of them right. But this is Nakba and this is Nakba. This is the first Nakba and this is the second Nakba. And those are problems that we have to face. Like when our grandparents were attacked in their homelands, they were forced to flee their lands. And also when you are attacked inside your land and when you are besieged by all sorts of things that force you to leave,

Does it feel like the first Nakba never ended or that you were living through a second one? It's a prolonged one, actually. It's a Nakba with a new face, with a new policy. And this maybe would force people to just escape. Like we have many of the generations of the youths in Gaza who are trying to escape, you know, from Gaza, even in illegal ways.

According to the United Nations, more than 2,700 Palestinians arrived in Greece by sea in 2022 alone. This makes up 22% of all boat arrivals. It is the highest of any national group.

They are well educated, they finished their education in Gaza, they are, you know, they're holding certificates and they didn't have like a job or an opportunity. And this is what Israeli authorities are doing for Palestinians, forcing them to lose hope in the Palestinian issues. It should be a national, you know, duty for everyone to believe in.

So many Palestinians are just abandoning, you know, being in Palestine and being in the Gaza Strip. And they fit up with the situation. So they are escaping. They are looking and immigrating from the Gaza Strip. And this is one of the worst results, you know, happened after the blockade on Gaza.

Madam, we know that Israel has banned schools from teaching the history of the Nakba and threatened organizations who mark May 15th as a day of mourning. And even the Palestinian Authority has been criticized for downplaying the Nakba in school curriculums. So how aware are the younger generations about what happened? And how are you teaching your own daughter about the Nakba?

Actually, it's not about the curriculum. We don't need someone to teach us the impact of the Nakba and the history of Nakba. As I told you, it's like a heritage. Like I told the same story to my daughter. She is now seven years old and now she knows what happened that year. And she always like, you know, posing and asking me what happened to her village.

and the schools were celebrating not by the box and by the queer club

It was just, you know, the teachers were telling us to come on that day prepared with the information about our original lands and our original villages and to write and to draw banners reading the name of our lands in order to mark the day. And this happened through the long years of education in primary schools and preparatory schools.

You mentioned that Ashjud is only a couple of hours away from Gaza. Have you ever been? No, actually, I saw just a glimpse of a sign

I had the chance to travel to Qatar two years ago through the Erezik crossing. The Erezik crossing is controlled by Israeli military, so I got the permit at the time. The journey in order to arrive, I had to pass through the historical lands of Palestine. I had to see the lands that our grandparents were cooked out from. So I stick next to the window in the bus

and trying to focus as much as I can in order to see the land of my grandparents. And I was just reading the signs. So through those two hours of passing through the original land, it's a chance for me to see those.

So I just, you know, saw a sign there. You know, there was written Ashdod. And I just took a shaky photo of that moment. And my eyes were not staring in the phone. They were just focusing on the Palestinian lands around me. It was for me a chance that I can't, it won't be repeated, you know, easily for me.

Do you think that the world is aware of the new Nakba, as you've called it, in Gaza? I'm not sure, actually, if they are aware. That's why, for myself as a journalist, I try my best to focus on the new Nakba, because it's not seen by the outside world. They don't focus or watch what is going on in Gaza, etc.,

except there is an escalation, there is a military attack, there is a bombing, or there is a story like this, but they are not focusing on the daily suffering of the people created by the blockade and how this blockade impacted the life of many people who are born and raised under that blockade.

There is an ongoing Nakba in Gaza and if there is nothing happening in Gaza that means not people are enjoying their life. No, they are living a daily war, a daily war of fighting with the conditions, the unbeatable and the exceptional conditions brought out by the blockade imposed on Gaza. And that's The Take.

This episode was produced by Miranda Lin, with Khaled Sultan, Chloe K. Lee, Nagin Oliyai, Amy Walters, Ashish Mahhotra, Sonia Bagat, and me, Malika Bilal. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Munira Al-Jusari and Adama Bukad are our engagement producers. Alexandra Locke is the Take's executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio.