JERUSALEM: Palestinians on Wednesday will mark the 76th year of their mass expulsion from what is now Israel, an event that is at the core of their national struggle. But in many ways, that experience pales in comparison to the calamity now unfolding in Gaza.
Palestinians refer to it as the “Nakba,” Arabic for “catastrophe.” Some 700,000 Palestinians — a majority of the prewar population — fled or were driven from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment.
After the war, Israel refused to allow them to return because it would have resulted in a Palestinian majority within its borders. Instead, they became a seemingly permanent refugee community that now numbers some 6 million, with most living in slum-like urban refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
In Gaza, the refugees and their descendants make up around three-quarters of the population.
Israel’s rejection of what Palestinians say is their right of return has been a core grievance in the conflict and was one of the thorniest issues in peace talks that last collapsed 15 years ago. The refugee camps have always been the main bastions of Palestinian militancy.
Now, many Palestinians fear a repeat of their painful history on an even more cataclysmic scale.
All across Gaza, Palestinians in recent days have been loading up cars and donkey carts or setting out on foot to already overcrowded tent camps as Israel expands its offensive. The images from several rounds of mass evacuations throughout the seven-month war are strikingly similar to black-and-white photographs from 1948.
Mustafa Al-Gazzar, now 81, still recalls his family’s monthslong flight from their village in what is now central Israel to the southern city of Rafah, when he was 5. At one point they were bombed from the air, at another, they dug holes under a tree to sleep in for warmth.
Al-Gazzar, now a great-grandfather, was forced to flee again over the weekend, this time to a tent in Muwasi, a barren coastal area where some 450,000 Palestinians live in a squalid camp. He says the conditions are worse than in 1948, when the UN agency for Palestinian refugees was able to regularly provide food and other essentials.
“My hope in 1948 was to return, but my hope today is to survive,” he said. “I live in such fear,” he added, breaking into tears. “I cannot provide for my children and grandchildren.”
The war in Gaza, which was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into Israel, has killed over 35,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, making it by far the deadliest round of fighting in the history of the conflict. The initial Hamas attack killed some 1,200 Israelis.
The war has forced some 1.7 million Palestinians — around three quarters of the territory’s population — to flee their homes, often multiple times. That is well over twice the number that fled before and during the 1948 war.
Israel has sealed its border. Egypt has only allowed a small number of Palestinians to leave, in part because it fears a mass influx of Palestinians could generate another long-term refugee crisis.
The international community is strongly opposed to any mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza — an idea embraced by far-right members of the Israeli government, who refer to it as “voluntary emigration.”
Israel has long called for the refugees of 1948 to be absorbed into host countries, saying that calls for their return are unrealistic and would endanger its existence as a Jewish-majority state. It points to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who came to Israel from Arab countries during the turmoil following its establishment, though few of them want to return.
Even if Palestinians are not expelled from Gaza en masse, many fear that they will never be able to return to their homes or that the destruction wreaked on the territory will make it impossible to live there. A recent UN estimate said it would take until 2040 to rebuild destroyed homes.
The Jewish militias in the 1948 war with the armies of neighboring Arab nations were mainly armed with lighter weapons like rifles, machine guns and mortars. Hundreds of depopulated Palestinian villages were demolished after the war, while Israelis moved into Palestinian homes in Jerusalem, Jaffa and other cities.
In Gaza, Israel has unleashed one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history, at times dropping 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs on dense, residential areas. Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to wastelands of rubble and plowed-up roads, many littered with unexploded bombs.
The World Bank estimates that $18.5 billion in damage has been inflicted on Gaza, roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of the entire Palestinian territories in 2022. And that was in January, in the early days of Israel’s devastating ground operations in Khan Younis and before it went into Rafah.
Even before the war, many Palestinians spoke of an ongoing Nakba, in which Israel gradually forces them out of Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories it captured during the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for a future state. They point to home demolitions, settlement construction and other discriminatory policies that long predate the war, and which major rights groups say amount to apartheid, allegations Israel denies.
Nakba: Palestinians mark 76 years of dispossession as a potentially even larger catastrophe unfolds in Gaza
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Nakba: Palestinians mark 76 years of dispossession as a potentially even larger catastrophe unfolds in Gaza

- In Gaza, the refugees and their descendants make up around three-quarters of the population
- Now, many Palestinians fear a repeat of their painful history on an even more cataclysmic scale
Russian says military base in Syria sheltering 8,000 displaced

“The Russian air base at Hmeimim has opened its doors to local residents fleeing from the pogroms... Our military have given refuge to more than 8,000 people,” Maria Zakharova told reporters at a regular briefing.
Israeli airstrike targets Palestinian Islamic Jihad headquarters in Damascus

- The Syrian monitor says at least one dead in Israel strike
DAMASCUS: Israeli aircraft struck a building in Damascus on Thursday, Syria's state news agency SANA reported. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, confirmed the attack, stating that two missiles hit the building, killing at least one person. The airstrike took place in an area where Palestinian leaders are known to reside.
According to two Syrian security sources, the target of the Israeli strike was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization headquarters. One of the sources identified the victim as a Palestinian person. However, the Israeli military did not immediately comment on the attack, though an Israeli army radio military correspondent confirmed that an Israeli aircraft had targeted the Islamic Jihad headquarters in Damascus.
Turkiye says forces killed 24 Kurdish militants in Syria, Iraq in a week

- A defense ministry source said the deal between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Damascus did not change Turkiye’s commitment to counter-terrorism in Syria
ANKARA: Turkish forces killed 24 Kurdish militants in northern Iraq and Syria over the past week, the defense ministry said on Thursday, continuing attacks in the region after a disarmament call from the PKK leader and a separate accord between US-backed Kurds and Damascus.
Speaking at a briefing in Ankara, a defense ministry source said the deal between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Damascus did not change Turkiye’s commitment to counter-terrorism in Syria, and that it still demands that the YPG militia, which spearheads the SDF, disband and disarm.
Turkiye views the SDF, which controls much of northeast Syria, as a terrorist group linked with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state. It has carried out several cross-border offensives against the group.
The PKK’s leader, jailed in Turkiye, called for the group to disarm last month. The group is based in northern Iraq.
Israel releases fifth detainee says Lebanon army

- Israel had earlier said it was releasing the five as a goodwill gesture to Lebanon’s recently appointed President Joseph Aoun
BEIRUT: The Lebanese army said it received on Thursday a soldier taken by Israel last weekend, after Israel handed over four other detainees earlier this week.
“The army through the International Committee of the Red Cross received (on Thursday) the soldier who was kidnapped by the Israeli enemy” on Sunday, the army said on X, adding that he had been transported to a hospital for treatment.
On Tuesday, Lebanon received four detainees who had been taken into custody by Israel during its war with Hezbollah, after Israel announced it was releasing them.
“Lebanon received four Lebanese prisoners who were detained by Israeli forces during the last war,” the presidency said at the time, adding the fifth was due to be released the following day.
Israel had earlier said it was releasing the five as a goodwill gesture to Lebanon’s recently appointed President Joseph Aoun.
“In coordination with the United States and as a gesture to Lebanon’s new president, Israel has agreed to release five Lebanese detainees,” the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
The office said the decision came after a meeting held earlier in the day in the Lebanese border town of Naqoura that included representatives of the Israeli army, the United States, France and Lebanon.
In an interview to Lebanese news channel Al-Jadeed, US deputy special envoy for the Middle East Morgan Ortagus said the five Lebanese prisoners were a mix of civilians and soldiers.
On November 27, Israel and Lebanon agreed to a US-French mediated truce that has largely halted more than a year of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, including two months of full-blown war in which Israel sent in ground troops.
While the ceasefire continues to hold, Israel has periodically carried out air strikes on Lebanon that it says are to prevent Hezbollah from rearming or returning to the area along its northern border.
Israel attacks on Gaza reproductive centers ‘genocidal’: UN probe

- The commission found that Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive health care
- The United Nations’ genocide convention defines that crime as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group
GENEVA: A United Nations investigation concluded Thursday that Israel carried out “genocidal” acts in Gaza through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive health care facilities.
The UN Commission of Inquiry said Israel had “intentionally attacked and destroyed” the Palestinian territory’s main fertility center, and had simultaneously imposed a siege and blocked aid including medication for ensuring safe pregnancies, deliveries and neonatal care.
“Israel categorically rejects the unfounded allegations,” its mission in Geneva said in a statement.
The commission found that Israeli authorities “have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive health care,” it said in a statement.
It said this amounted to “two categories of genocidal acts” during Israel’s offensive in Gaza, launched after the attacks by Hamas militants on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The United Nations’ genocide convention defines that crime as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
Of its five categories, the inquiry said the two implicating Israel were “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
“These violations have not only caused severe immediate physical and mental harm and suffering to women and girls, but irreversible long-term effects on the mental health and reproductive and fertility prospects of Palestinians as a group,” the commission’s chair Navi Pillay said in a statement.
The three-person Independent International Commission of Inquiry was established by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021 to investigate alleged international law violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Pillay, a former UN rights chief, served as a judge on the International Criminal Court and presided over the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Israel accused the commission of advancing a “predetermined and biased political agenda... in a shameless attempt to incriminate the Israel Defense Forces.”
The report said maternity hospitals and wards had been systematically destroyed in Gaza, along with the Al-Basma IVF Center, the territory’s main in-vitro fertility clinic.
It said Al-Basma was shelled in December 2023, reportedly destroying around 4,000 embryos at a clinic that served 2,000 to 3,000 patients a month.
The commission found that the Israeli Security Forces intentionally attacked and destroyed the clinic, including all the reproductive material stored for the future conception of Palestinians.
The commission found no credible evidence that the building was used for military purposes.
It concluded that the destruction “was a measure intended to prevent births among Palestinians in Gaza, which is a genocidal act.”
Furthermore, the report said the wider harm to pregnant, lactating and new mothers in Gaza was on an “unprecedented scale,” with an irreversible impact on the reproductive prospects of Gazans.
Such underlying acts “amount to crimes against humanity” and deliberately trying to destroy the Palestinians as a group, the commission concluded.
The report came after the commission conducted public hearings in Geneva on Tuesday and Wednesday, hearing from victims and witnesses of sexual violence.
It concluded that Israel had targeted civilian women and girls directly, “acts that constitute the crime against humanity of murder and the war crime of wilful killing.”
Women and girls have also died from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth due to the conditions imposed by the Israeli authorities impacting access to reproductive health care, “acts that amount to the crime against humanity of extermination,” it added.
The commission added that forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape, as well as sexual assault, comprise part of the Israeli Security Forces’ “standard operating procedures” toward Palestinians.
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