In refugee camps across the West Bank, the Nakba’s anniversary is no longer just a traumatic memory of the violent expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948.
Today, Palestine’s foundational tragedy stirs anxious thoughts of history repeating itself, as aggressive Israeli raids across the occupied territory mark a renewed displacement crisis that echoes the horrors of the Nakba.
In conversations at nine camps, Palestinians see the 78-year-old catastrophe not as history, but as a warning.
Amina Khalil is as old as the Nakba itself, 78. She’s spent her entire life in Kalandia, a densely populated refugee camp established in 1949 in the West Bank.
Over the years, not much has changed in the camp. But one thing has: how younger generations talk about the Nakba.
“My grandchildren don’t ask me, ‘What happened?'” Amina tells The New Arab. “They’re asking, ‘Is this possible now? Will it happen again?'”
Amina is a widow and mother of five. Her tiny flat at the centre of the camp is lined with photos that capture life before 1948.
“The photos are not so I can remember. The photos are so I can say to my grandchildren, we were there. We were people who had land, a name, and a place,” she shares.
As Israel’s genocidal war continues to rage in Gaza, the West Bank has also been pummeled by Israeli airstrikes, drone attacks, and incursions at a rate not seen in decades.
Armoured vehicles and bulldozers have torn up paved roads, cut water lines, destroyed electricity grids and sewage networks, leaving civilian infrastructure in tatters.
Camps like Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams have been particularly hard-hit. The thousands of displaced Palestinians have created, yet again, scenes reminiscent of 1948.
Sixty-five-year-old Nadia Kanaan lives in the Tulkarm camp. Though Israeli military operations have torn through the area, their real impact is “not in terms of demolished walls,” Nadia says, but “in the way our children now think. In how they ask, ‘will we stay?'”
As Mahmoud Nasser explains, “We saw what happened in those camps. We saw people leaving with whatever they could carry. We saw houses demolished. And then we saw… the silence. And the return was not a full return.”
As a resident of the Jalazoun camp, about seven kilometres north of Ramallah, the 32-year-old explains, “I did not live through 1948. But I have lived a feeling that resembles it. For us, resisting displacement doesn’t always mean using arms. Sometimes, our resistance is just to be present.”
Still, the threat of abrupt displacement leaves a perpetual sense of uncertainty. “This is not a normal life,” said Youssef Hassan, a 53-year-old resident of Balata Camp. “This is a life in which the concept of emergency is taught from childhood.”
Sara Awad, 32, lives in the Dhesisheh camp, three kilometres south of Bethlehem. Though she was born decades after the Nakba, she talks about it as a working memory.
“I grew up on my grandfather’s stories. Then on my mother’s stories. Then on television images. Then on raids I witnessed with my own eyes,” she tells The New Arab.
“All of this does not form only ‘historical memory.’ It forms my daily way of thinking. I do not carry a direct memory. I carry a transferred memory. Meaning fear, for me, is an inheritance,” she said.
For Sara, every decision is coloured by the imposed reality of the Nakba. “What do I name my child? Should I buy new furniture? Do I make my life stable? All these questions pass through the same loop: Will this last?” she questions.
“The difference between my grandmother and me is that when she left, she did not know she would not return. But I know. And that means I will not go,” Sara added.
‘Displacement is not inevitable’
Nowadays in the West Bank, nowhere feels safe. Omar al-Saadi recently walked through the alleys of Fawwar camp where he lives, wondering how to talk to his children about Israel’s increasingly aggressive campaigns.
“My children ask me: can what happened in Jenin and Tulkarm happen to us?” the 45-year-old tells The New Arab.
“I can’t give them a guarantee that tomorrow is certain. Because it’s not. That’s the truth we live with.”
The crushing part of exile is that it strips everything of its value, Omar explained. “Your home is worthless, because it’s temporary. Your name is worthless because you’re a refugee. Your dream is worthless, because reality overshadows it.”
To resist, Omar assigns meaning to everything anyway. As he put it: “Attachment to the camp is resistance. And so we restore our worth. Every day. This is the resistance that no one sees.”
At Aida camp, 44-year-old Layla Abu Khalil has taught Arabic for more than 15 years. “I teach language. But sometimes, I also teach what it means to be a refugee,” she tells The New Arab.
When Layla talks with her students about recent Israeli assaults on the West Bank, she sees fear, but also something else: “I see something that says, ‘we will not leave,'” Layla says.
“One of them wrote a phrase about the camp as if it were a homeland. He didn’t write: ‘The camp is a temporary place.’ He wrote: ‘The camp is home.’ A ten-year-old child wrote that,” Layla shared.
She sees such framing as a form of resistance. “They understand — without being explicitly taught — that displacement is not an inevitable fate.
“They ask: ‘Can it come here?’ I don’t lie to them. I say: ‘It’s possible.’ But I also say: ‘This is why we learn. This is why we stay. Because whoever does not know their name, their place, and their history, can be easily erased.'”
Rami Qasim lives in Nur Shams camp, another West Bank site that’s been subject to extensive raids since the war on Gaza began, with thousands displaced.
Rami said growing up in Nur Shams has offered a type of “enforced clarity.” There are no illusions of stability.
“Here, there is no time for pretence. You know who you are, and you know what you face. And that, in a way, gives you a kind of honesty with yourself,” he tells The New Arab.
“Resisting displacement for us is not a choice. It is part of how we define ourselves. If we accepted displacement — even in our minds — we would have done what they wanted from us, without them having to do anything,” he adds.
Locks and keys
On Tuesday, Palestinians marched in Ramallah to mark the 78th anniversary of the Nakba. Setting off from the mausoleum of Yasser Arafat, they carried keys to symbolise their right of return.
“The Palestinian people have never and will never reconcile themselves to the idea that the elders will die and the young will forget. Here are the elders and the young together commemorating the anniversary, despite all the measures being taken in Tel Aviv,” said Sabri Saidam of the Fatah Central Committee, speaking from the rally.
“The Palestinian Nakba is not an occasion being commemorated,” said Ramzi Rabbah, member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
“It is a moment to renew the struggle and fight for the right of return. Today, all colours of the Palestinian spectrum are united in the idea of the right of return.”
Abd al-Rahim Saleh, 88, sits in his wooden chair in the Al-Amari camp, which he arrived at from the city of Lod in 1948. Though he lived through the Nakba, he doesn’t like to describe what happened.
He calls his 78 years in the camp a “life in parentheses,” moving forward but going nowhere. “I know no home but a room. And I know no road but the road of fear,” Abd al-Rahim tells The New Arab.
From his pocket, he pulled out his own key, an old relic of days gone by, and slowly raised it in the air.
“This key used to hang somewhere once,” he says.
“It still teaches me one thing: that a door, once opened… can also be used to lock you out.”
Aseel Mafarjeh is a West Bank-focused journalist, focusing on stories that speak of the challenges and creativity of youth in Palestine
This article is published in collaboration with Egab
