On the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, or the “catastrophe,” Israeli forces killed at least 143 Palestinians, mostly women and children, across the Gaza Strip as part of the regime’s ongoing onslaught on the Palestinian territory. 

The Nakba, commemorated on May 15 every year, marks the forced expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland by Zionist paramilitary groups. This deed was carried out to pave the way for the creation of the Israeli regime in 1948.

Events in Palestine That Led to the Nakba

Initially, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries until Great Britain captured the land of olives at the end of World War One (1914–1918).

The League of Nations gave Britain a “mandate” over Palestine after the war while agreeing to not consider the opinions and wishes of the native Palestinian population. 

The declared incentive of the League of Nations mandates was to provide administrative assistance and advice to the native population until they were declared capable of emerging alone as an independent state. 

However, for Palestine, the British Mandate assimilated the “Balfour Declaration.” This pledged to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, who summed up to less than 10% at the time.

It was in these mandate years between 1923–1948 when Britain facilitated the immigration of Jews to Palestine. This swelled their population from 60,000 in the pre-mandate era to a staggering 700,000 by 1948.

Britain also trained Zionist armed groups, equipped them with weapons, and even granted them self-governance.

The Beginning of the Annexation of Palestine

The Palestinian population, on the other hand, were viciously suppressed in the wake of an uprising that called for an independent Palestinian state and rejected European Jewish immigration.

Hostilities in Palestine were on the rise, and by February 1947, Britain announced its termination of the mandate on the Palestinians and referred the matter to the United Nations. 

Back then, the native Muslim and Christian Arabs of Palestine amounted to around 67% of the population and owned roughly 93% of the land. The Jewish settlers accumulated to around 33% of the population and had ownership of only 7% of the land.

Later that year in September, the UN General Assembly formed an ad hoc committee which sought to appraise the UNSCOP’s report (Partition Plan). This explicitly recommended dividing Palestine into two parts, a Jewish state and an Arab state, while labeling Jerusalem as an “international zone.”

The UN suggested giving 55% of the land to the recently arrived Jewish immigrants despite owning only 7% of the land and accumulating to only one-third of the population. About 45% of the land was proposed for the native Palestinian Arabs, who owned over 90% of the land and amounted to two-thirds of the population.

The land was so disparagingly divided that 55% of the land allocated for the Jewish state would still have a 45% population of indigenous Arabs and only 55% Jewish settlers. The 45% indigenous Arabs were reduced to minorities overnight and were to be governed under a Jewish ruling body.

This raised questions on the eligibility of a “Jewish” state when almost half of the population were not even Jewish.

Moreover, the 45% of land allocated to the proposed Arab state would be 99% populated by Arabs, and the international zone in Jerusalem was to be divided into a 50/50 split.

The annexation of Palestine was carefully crafted to benefit the Jews, as most of the fertile coastline—such as the two port cities of Haifa and Jaffa (present-day Tel Aviv), as well as the Negev region which was bursting with resources, the Sea of Galilee, and the only access to the Red Sea in the south—were given to Israel.

This was met with resistance by the indigenous Palestinians who opposed the plan, while the Zionists embraced it. 

However, despite their non-native status, they demanded more land, including David Ben-Gurion who was Israel’s first Prime Minister. They opposed the plan and considered waging war as a perfect opportunity to expand the new state’s borders beyond the barrier set by the UN, at the cost of the Palestinians’ lives.

On November 29, 1947, following intense lobbying on member states by the US and Zionist organizations, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, supported by 33 votes in favor, 13 against, and 10 abstained. 

The native Palestinians and surrounding Arab states saw the UN’s resolution as an act of injustice, and an international failure as it clashed with the basic principles for which the organization was established—to uphold the right to self-determination for all people.

The UN’s decision was met in Palestine by strikes, demonstrations, and protests. Zionist settlers saw this as a golden opportunity and attacked Palestinians, invaded their villages, destroyed their homes, and expelled hundreds of thousands of natives. 

In this way, Israel gave birth to one of the greatest catastrophes in recent history—the Nakba.

The Resistance of the Palestinians

The Palestinians did what they could in their power to protect themselves and their land. However, the indigenous Arabs were scarcely armed, as their militarization was prevented by the British during the mandate period.

The Palestinians then approached Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon to aid them, which is what led to the First Arab-Israeli War. The Zionist occupation forces, backed by the US and Britain, gained superiority and usurped lands not designated to them by the UN.

The First Arab-Israeli War ended in Israel’s declaration of statehood on May 15, 1948, and an official armistice agreement in 1949 which followed suit. Egypt controlled Gaza, and Jordan was granted dominance over the West Bank.

The Nakba

The Zionists were now materializing plans formulated as early as 1945, which included the systematic increase of attacks against Palestinians from December 1947, with the objective of expelling them from their own land.

 In the Plan Dalet, their blueprint for military action, they called for the destruction of villages by setting ablaze, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris.

It also said that “in the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.”

This was carried out by bombing campaigns, large-scale massacres, and psychological warfare, to mention a few.

Innocent civilians were ruthlessly slaughtered during the campaign, some of whom were buried in mass graves. Between December 1947 and May 1948, around 175,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland, and 200 villages and urban centers were destroyed and occupied. 

By May 14, Israel enforced the declaration of its state, a day before the British Mandate officially expired.

The hostilities initiated by Israel and resisted by the Palestinians were brought to a standstill in July 1949, with the signing of an armistice agreement between the Israeli regime and the Arab states.

Israel usurped 78% of historic Palestine, and the remaining 22% fell under Arab control.

The Aftermath of the Nakba

By the end of Israel’s attempt to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians, the Zionist forces killed 13,000 Palestinians, destroyed and depopulated around 530 villages and towns, committed at least 30 massacres, and expelled 750,000 indigenous Palestinians.

Israel then issued laws through which the regime stole Palestinian property and assets left behind by those expelled, including land, homes, cash, stocks, furniture, companies, and other assets.

It also enforced the Law of Return, which grants Israeli citizenship to Jews who relocate to Israel, all while denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their own homeland.

Gaza Today – Worse Than the Nakba

Until today, Palestine remains the world’s largest open-air prison, with Israel continuing to annex Palestinian territory, wage wars, carry out sieges and confiscations.

The ongoing Israeli onslaught has killed over 53,000 people—mostly women and children—since October 7, 2023.

It has also forcibly displaced around 2.4 million Palestinians, almost the entire population of the besieged enclave, while imposing a crippling blockade of food, water, fuel, and life-saving medications into the Strip. 

This has spawned one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes and led to the collapse of Gaza’s entire health-care system.

Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza have now become the most documented genocide in history, drawing parallels with the regime’s heinous crimes during the Nakba, with experts labeling it as “worse than the Nakba.”

According to Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti, the Nakba for the Palestinians stands as the greatest catastrophe, which created a system of much worse apartheid than what ruled in South Africa.

“As a matter of fact, we are now subjected to the longest occupation in modern history, the worst system of apartheid, and the worst act of the settler colonial system,” he said.

Barghouti then revealed that despite half of Palestinians being refugees outside their territory, there are still more Palestinians in the land of Palestine than Jewish Israelis.

“That is why the Zionist project failed. It obtained the land. It conquered the land by force — by military force — by massacres. But it could not force us all to leave,” he added.

Barghouti further stated that Israel’s current offensive in Gaza is a “second Nakba, but even worse.”

 Since 1948, the Israeli regime has waged over 13 wars against the Palestinians and killed 100,000 people. This, he stressed, is “half of what they killed in 76 years.”

For the Palestinians, Nakba Day is not just a catastrophic event in history, but the beginning of the atrocious crimes committed by the Israeli regime—a reminder of why resistance towards injustice is the only way to achieve a free Palestinian state.