From Nakba to Gaza war: Elderly Palestinian shares stories of displacement, resilience

By Hosni Nadim

GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) – Israel’s brutal war on the Gaza Strip resurrects harrowing memories of Nakba for Palestinian elder Fouziya Abu Labda.

The Nakba, or Catastrophe in Arabic, is marked by the Palestinians on May 15 to remember the expulsion of hundreds of thousands from their homes and lands in 1948 after the founding of Israel.

Abu Labda, 85, recalls the old memories with pain and sorrow, reminiscing about her family's displacement from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip following an Israeli ground attack on the city.

“The current Israeli war on Gaza is crueler and more atrocious than the Nakba,” Abu Labda told Anadolu.

“But we will never leave our lands,” the Palestinian elder stressed.

The total Palestinian population worldwide reached 14.63 million by the end of 2023, a tenfold increase since the Nakba of 1948, according to the Palestinian figures.

Abu Labda was born in the central city of Yibna in historical Palestine. She was six years old when the Nakba happened.

“Our houses were big, and my father worked in agriculture. We cultivated our lands with everything necessary for survival, but the Jews came and seized everything. We were forced to leave,” she recalled.

Her family moved from one place to another during their displacement journey. They lived in Ashdod and Majdal for a while, but assaults by illegal Israeli settlers never stopped, forcing the Palestinian family to flee to the Gaza Strip.

Years have drawn wrinkles on Abu Labda's face as she spoke with a voice filled with sad hoarseness.

“We were displaced once in 1948, and we will not accept to be displaced again from Gaza,” the adamant Palestinian woman said.

She expressed her extreme sorrow and pain for the ordeal of Palestinian civilians amid atrocious Israeli massacres and crimes, especially against women and children.

- Vivid memories

Abu Labda can’t take the memories of her family’s displacement at the hands of Israeli gangs from her memory.

“The memories of wars and attacks are still vivid in my mind. We experienced constant fear, and even now, in my old age, I still remember those moments in detail,” she said.

With disdain, she wondered, “Where do we go now?! This is our country, and we will not leave or migrate. How can we move from one area to another amid the mass destruction? There is no safe place in Gaza.”

“Israel mercilessly killed our youth and women and deprived our children of their lives. We are fed up with wars; every year, Israel wages a war, and before we recover from its pains, it launches a harsher one.”

The elderly Palestinian denounced Arab, Islamic, and international reluctance towards genocidal crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza, calling for an urgent halt to the Israeli war.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip following Palestinian resistance group Hamas' cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 people.

At least 35,180 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have since been killed, and over 79,000 others injured, according to Palestinian health authorities.

More than seven months into the conflict, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January said it is "plausible" that Tel Aviv is committing genocide in Gaza, ordering it to stop such acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

*Writing by Mohammad Sio