My elderly relatives first fled for their lives in 1948. In Gaza right now they are walking the Nakba again- Ghada Ageel in The Guardian

 Their story is that of thousands of other Palestinians: forced to move time and time again, their homes lost or destroyed 

A Palestinian drags bricks at a camp for displaced people in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/14/a-second-nakba-in-gaza

A friend sent me a cartoon this week. It showed two elderly gentlemen sitting in comfortable chairs. One says to the other: “Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.” “Yes,” agrees the other gentleman, “and those who do study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it.”

In the case of the heartbreaking devastation in my home town of Khan Younis, this seems like an especially cruel joke. Witnessing this genocide unfolding, I find myself failing to find much to laugh at.

My brother-in-law, Abu Issam, 88, and his wife, Um Issam, 84, are originally from Swafeer. The village no longer exists. It was obliterated, with more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages, in the 1948 Nakba, the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and lands after the creation of Israel.

Abu Issam with his niece Ghaida Hamdan in Khan Younis camp.

Fleeing the destruction in Swafeer in 1948, Abu Issam sought refuge in the nearby village of Hamama. When Hamama also came under attack, the family continued their journey to the Palestinian town of al-Sdud (present-day Isdud), then to al-Majdal (present-day Ashkelon), then to Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip, finally ending up in Khan Younis refugee camp.

Back then, Abu Issam was about to become a teenager. Today he walks with a stick, slowly, stopping for rest, then slowly again. And yet his future remains as uncertain today as it was in 1948.

Already very densely populated, Khan Younis had become a sanctuary for those fleeing bombing in the north of Gaza – only for the offensive to follow them there.... READ MORE

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/14/a-second-nakba-in-gaza

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