"The 2nd Nakba and Echoes of 1948"
This time, it's happening right in front of our eyes.
If you took pictures from present day Palestine and put them side by side with those from 1948, the only difference is today, they are in color. Thousands of Palestinians are being displaced from their homes once again and being evacuated on foot, as those who have chosen to leave their homes walk from the north to the south. The images and video footage is painful and highly disturbing to watch. Along the way, babies have died on the road, just like the stories from 1948. I have a friend in Jordan whose Grandparents were expelled in the first Nakba. She told me about her father's baby brother dying on the road due to lack of food and water.
"My grandmother stopped producing milk because she was dehydrated, and they had no food. My Father's baby brother died as they were on the road."
Today in Gaza, some of the elderly and the wounded who can barely walk, are also going south. I saw the video of an elderly lady who was a refugee from 1948 and placed into Gaza, is once again being displaced. I will never forget the video of a mother dragging her 2 children behind her. They were in car seats, and she was pulling the seats with ropes for miles. I believe any of us mothers would do the exact same thing. We would walk miles to try and save our children and to protect them.
Many others are not evacuating in the north because they have already seen their fellow Palestinians who tried to go south on the Salah Ad-Dein Road, a corridor that Israel claimed was safe for civilians, being killed enroute. They have been bombed and shot by sniper fire. No place is truly safe. Others are refusing to leave because they know what happened to their family members last time they left their homes in 1948. Their land and homes were taken by Israeli settlers, and they have never been able to return since. Remember as I told you in part 10, the majority of the people living in Gaza are refugees or the descendants of refugees from the 1948 Al-Nakba.
Try to imagine abandoning your home, leaving behind your entire life, and embarking on a journey of uncertainty on foot with your babies and young children.
Daily here in Jordan, we hear stories of how many families are making the decision in Gaza to either die together---meaning, they are putting their entire family and extended family into one apartment so that if their building is bombed by Israel, they will all die together. Other families are spreading their families and children out in different areas, so that if some of them die, some of them will live to carry on the family name.
The reports now from Gaza are not all that different if you watch documentaries from Al-Nakba. People hiding in schools and then being massacred. Men being brought out into the street and then shot. Here is a video of an Israeli soldier taking a Palestinian man and using him as a human shield.
Hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, there is no safe place in Gaza.
"Israeli soldiers just broke into my family's house west of Gaza City, arrested my uncle and his 6 male children, took the women and children as human shields, then let them go under gunfire in the streets. They called and let us know what happened. The fate of the men is unknown. We just got in touch with my cousin's wife who fled, and she gave us the harrowing details. I'm in shock. The Israeli soldiers bombed the gate to our house, entered our garden, then shot a missile at our door in the first floor. My two cousins, their wives and children were there." Shaima Ziara
What will ultimately be the plight of these people this time? Will they eventually be pushed into the Sinai? Will they be able to return to their homes, or at least the rubble that is left from them? Or will Israel now take over and occupy Gaza and start building settlements? We can see in every area IDF soldiers go; they raise the Israeli flag.
Top US officials including Anthony Blinken have said the Palestinian people will not be displaced again. Netanyahu two days ago has said "the IDF will maintain military control for as long as necessary," and there will be "complete security control by the Israeli army with the ability to enter Gaza whenever we want to take out terrorists." Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security has called for re-building settlements in Gaza.
The only difference between 2023 and 1948 is that the weapons have become deadlier, the best and most advanced in the entire world, and we are watching it all unfold before our eyes. In 1948, America couldn't or didn't see what was happening to the Palestinians during their first Nakba. If we had been able to see and truly know the plight of the Palestinians would Americans have been ok with it back then? Today there is no excuse for not knowing, and there is no excuse for being ok with this. History will remember and so will we who stood against it.