Every year in mid-May, Palestinians commemorate the “Nakba” (the Great Catastrophe), which turned their lives upside down in 1948. The large iron keys carried in marches held in cities across the world serve as a tangible reminder of the homes, shops and lands left behind in Jaffa, Haifa and Al-Quds. For many, the address, land registry record and even the door are still known. Those doors were closed some 78 years ago, and the owners’ return was prevented by the occupying military and legal regulations.

The term “Nakba” has transcended its literal meaning of “catastrophe” to signify the process by which a modern society’s national identity is structurally uprooted and displaced. For Palestinians, this word expresses their severance from their homeland; the dismantling of a world sustained by its cities, institutions, economy and cultural life. Palestine, prior to 1948, was not a mere collection of villages and agricultural lands. It was a vibrant social structure—a leading regional centre with functioning ports, published newspapers, a banking system, and educational institutions.

For this reason, the events of the Nakba are not viewed as a temporary wave of migration brought about by the occupation. On the contrary, they represent the systematic dismantling of a civilisation and the forced displacement of some 750,000 Palestinians from their civilian status in a stable homeland to refugee camps where they are deprived of their most basic rights. Today, clinging to the “key” represents a legal stance that refuses to relinquish the right of return.

Pre-1948 Palestine

The Zionist narrative bases its marketing strategy to the outside world on the slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land”; it claims that Palestine was a barren and forgotten desert until it was revived by new settlers. However, this claim cannot withstand the documented facts, which have even been confirmed by the “New Israeli Historians” themselves. The historical panorama of Palestine prior to 1948 reveals a completely different picture of civilisation: The country was a vibrant economic and cultural hub at the heart of the Middle East, boasting international ports in Jaffa and Haifa, established financial institutions such as the Arab Bank, founded in Al-Quds in 1930, and an devloping industrial sector comprising oil refineries and factories.

Furthermore, prior to 1948, there was a thriving cultural scene across the Palestinian territories. Over fifty specialised newspapers and magazines were published in Palestinian cities, and the second-ever Arabic-language radio broadcast was transmitted from Al-Quds. These facts are corroborated by official statistics, which demonstrate that, up until the Nakba, Palestinians owned more than 94 per cent of historic Palestinian land, whilst Jewish immigrants’ property holdings did not exceed 6 per cent, despite the support of the British Mandate and its unjust laws.

The road to the Occupation

The process leading up to the Nakba began with the collapse of the centre—that is, the tearing apart of the Ottoman umbrella. The Ottoman Empire, particularly through Sultan Abdulhamid II’s famous stance against the sale of land, constituted a sovereign barrier against Zionist infiltration. With the weakening of the state during the First World War and the subsequent official abolition of the Caliphate in 1924, Palestine lost its international legal protection. Transformed into a “mandate territory” devoid of a legitimate authority with veto power, the region was rendered suitable for Britain to implement the promises it had made to the Zionist movement.

The second step was the severing of the northern artery, that is, the neutralisation of Bilad al-Sham. Syria represented Palestine’s direct geographical and logistical depth. With the “Sykes-Picot” agreement, this organic link was severed. Following the Battle of Maysalun in 1920, the French occupation of Damascus cut off humanitarian and military supplies from the north. This division transformed Palestine into an “isolated island” and prevented the formation of a united front against the Zionist gangs, which had open supply lines to Europe.

The third factor was the neutralisation of the influence of the south and east, namely Egypt and Iraq. Egypt was viewed as a strategic threat due to its manpower. From 1882 onwards, the British occupation dragged Egypt into internal conflicts and, through security agreements, restricted its army’s ability to make independent military decisions to liberate Palestine. Iraq, meanwhile, was isolated by artificial desert borders. In 1948, despite the Iraqi army’s battlefield successes in regions such as Jenin, political orders tied to British influence in Baghdad forced the troops to withdraw and remain confined to the ceasefire lines without completing the liberation.

The fourth phase of the occupation concerns Jordan’s role. Here, border engineering and restricted command are at play. Jordan, possessing the longest direct front line with Palestine, assumed the most critical role in the defence of Al-Quds and the West Bank. However, at that time, the Jordanian army was under the command of British officers, notably “Pasha Glubb”, who prevented the troops from crossing the borders drawn in the partition plan. This “restricted command” deprived the 1948 Arab military intervention of even minimal standards of equality; for the fragmented Arab armies found themselves facing a Zionist military machine comprising 67,000 fully equipped and organised fighters, against their own 21,000 troops.

Ethnic Cleansing: Massacres as a Means of Expulsion

The process of forcibly displacing Palestinians was based on a meticulous military strategy known as “Plan Dalet”. This plan aimed to purge villages and towns of their indigenous populations. Consequently, narratives suggesting that Palestinians “voluntarily abandoned” their lands do not align with historical reality. On the contrary, they were confronted with an organised killing machine that used horrific massacres as a “propaganda” tool to undermine social morale and force the population into mass exodus.

This brutality took concrete form in over 70 massacres designed to create a psychological and existential shock. The killing of civilians in Deir Yassin on 9 April 1948 and the spread of rumours of the atrocities to surrounding villages—particularly the warning “Leave immediately, or your fate will be like Deir Yassin’s”—instilled great fear among the population. In May 1948, villagers who had surrendered in Tantura were executed. In Lydda and Ramle, during mass deportations, thousands of people were forced to walk in the summer heat without water, and many lost their lives along the way.

Subsequently, hundreds of Palestinian villages were completely destroyed. New settlements were built on some of them, whilst attempts were made to erase the traces of others from maps. By 1949, approximately 750,000 Palestinians had become refugees, carrying with them the keys and title deeds to the homes they had left behind.

An Endless Nightmare…

The Nakba, one must say, is not a thing of the past. The process is still ongoing in various forms. What was once a policy of direct expulsion and mass deportation has now transformed into a system that divides Palestinian territories into isolated regions and condemns the people to a fragmented way of life. The most harrowing manifestation of this continuity is currently evident in Gaza. Gaza, which has lived under a blockade for nearly 18 years, has recently faced devastating attacks targeting neighbourhoods, hospitals and infrastructure. The constant displacement of surviving civilians, meanwhile, is reviving memories of the forced migration scenes of 1948 in the Palestinian collective memory.

A similar fragmentation prevails in the West Bank. Over 76 per cent of the land is under direct occupation control. Settlements, the Separation Wall and hundreds of military checkpoints have severed the links between cities. Palestinian cities have now become isolated zones with controlled entry and exit points, whilst even travelling from one city to another often turns into a long, exhausting and humiliating process.

As we enter the 78th year of the Nakba and the ongoing chapters of the genocide in Gaza, a question hangs over the conscience of the international community: what use are verbal expressions of solidarity that do not translate into practical steps to hold those responsible for these crimes to account? For a Palestinian, the principle that “the right does not die with the statute of limitations” remains the fundamental driving force of resistance. The key inherited by the grandson from his grandfather is a “living word” and a moral commitment to the return to those lands awaiting their rightful owners. It is the most concrete proof that national identity cannot be erased by a wall, a blockade, or even a war of genocide.

*The views expressed in this content are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of İdrakpost.