Today we mark the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, the “catastrophe,” in which three-quarters of the indigenous Palestinian population was forced from their homes to create the settler-colony of Israel. We have continued to live and witness the ongoing Nakba for 76 years. Now, Israel has launched a full-scale genocide against the Palestinian people.

2024: Palestinians rounded up in Gaza, stripped, blindfolded, and taken away.

1948: Palestinians forced from their homes. Hebrew writing on the bus says “To Gaza.”
For 76 years, the Nakba has continued to shatter Palestinian lives everywhere. The walls and fences, checkpoints, and military orders separate families, communities from each other, and separate farmers from their land. The killing, imprisonment, and slow strangulation are attempting to weaken and break the spirit of liberation. And now, the genocide targets everything Palestinian inside Gaza. It is not just the bodies of Palestinians, also the culture, identity, and the future. It is like we are back in the beginning. It is 1948 again. But this time, they are losing.
This Nakba is different because it has brought people back to the basic rights lost in 1948. After 76 years, after billions of dollars, after all the resources, weapons, and political support from other colonial powers in the world, the façade of Israel as the model democracy has been exposed. Their weaknesses have been revealed.
And why? Because Palestinian people have refused to give up their rights. They have not given up their right to the land, they are not compromising or asking for justice from those who repeatedly try to eliminate them. They resist displacement and erasure. This generation, those who have grown up through 17 years of siege on Gaza, have nothing left to lose. They rise with the understanding that their lives, their dignity, their future is rooted in their right to return. And also, what makes it different for Palestinians this time is that the solidarity movements all over the world are rooted, expanding, and gaining momentum. The movement is uniting all the social justice movements in the world together, with Palestine at the heart of this awakening.
The steadfastness of Palestinians on the ground is uplifting and influencing all groups and communities that care about social justice. Everyone in Gaza, in their daily sumoud, is providing a lesson of survival and commitment to their rights, and telling the world, no matter how much the suffering of everyone—children, old generations, all the community—that freedom is worth all this sacrifice. This is what we hear from people in Gaza.
As usual every May, every year, we witness the commitment of a new generation growing up and opening their eyes, and getting involved in the struggle to return to their own homes. No matter how long it will take, each new generation comes to take the torch. Many carry the keys of the homes from which their parents and grandparents were uprooted. For those that don’t have the keys of their destroyed houses, they draw images of these keys and carry it with them all the time.
Most of the media reports show that Palestinians everywhere, inside Palestine or in the diaspora, never accept half solutions such as half freedom, half rights, half a drink of water, half the right of return. Now, all the world can hear them well. Their allies are standing behind them, chanting:
From the river to the sea, Palestine is Palestine.
And for sure, soon, will be free.
In Solidarity,
Zeiad Abbas Shamrouch
Executive Director