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.

UNITED NATIONS: The United States called on Iran on Monday to halt its transfer of an “unprecedented” amount of weaponry to Yemen’s Houthi rebels, enabling its fighters to carry out “reckless attacks” on ships in the Red Sea and elsewhere.
US deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the UN Security Council that if it wants to make progress toward ending the civil war in Yemen it must act collectively to “call Iran out for its destabilizing role and insist that it cannot hide behind the Houthis.”
He said there is extensive evidence that Iran is providing advanced weapons, including ballistic and cruise missiles, to the Houthis in violation of UN sanctions.
“To underscore the council’s concern regarding the ongoing violations of the arms embargo, we must do more to strengthen enforcement and deter sanctions violators,” Wood said.
The Houthis say their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden are aimed at pressuring Israel to end its war with Hamas in Gaza, which has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians there. The war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 others hostage.
The Houthis have launched more than 50 attacks on shipping, seized one vessel and sunk another since November, the US Maritime Administration said late last month.
Houthi attacks have dropped in recent weeks as the rebels have been targeted by a US-led airstrike campaign in Yemen. Shipping through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden has declined because of the threat.
But Hans Grundberg, the UN special envoy for Yemen, warned the council that “hostilities continue” even though there has been a reduction in attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean as well as a reduction in the number of US and British airstrikes on targets in Yemen.
He pointed to an announcement by the Houthis that they will “expand the scope of attacks,” calling this “a worrisome provocation in an already volatile situation.”
Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council that the Israeli announcement on May 6 that it was starting its military operation in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, where 1.2 million Palestinians had sought safety, ratcheted up the spiral of escalation in the region “another notch further.”
“There’s no doubt that this will have an impact on the situation in Yemen’s surrounding waters,” he said, noting the Houthis’ opposition to Israeli attacks that harm Palestinian civilians.
But, Nebenzia added, “We call for a swift cessation of the shelling of commercial vessels and any other actions that hamper maritime navigation.”
He sharply criticized the United States and its Western allies, saying their “totally unjustified aggressive strikes” in Yemen violate the UN Charter. He said they further complicate an already complex situation and won’t improve the situation in the Red Sea.
The war between the Houthis and pro-government forces in Yemen backed by a coalition of Gulf Arab states has raged since 2014. The Houthis swept down from the mountains, seized much of northern Yemen and the country’s capital, Sanaa, and forced the internationally recognized government to flee into exile to Saudi Arabia. Since then, more than 150,000 people have been killed by the violence and 3 million have been displaced.
Fighting has decreased markedly in Yemen since a truce in April 2022, but there are still hotspots in the country
Grundberg recalled that in December the Houthis and the government “took a courageous step toward a peaceful solution” by agreeing to a series of commitments that would provide for a nationwide ceasefire, ensure desperately needed humanitarian aid, and initiate a political process to end the conflict.
But UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths reported “alarmingly high” levels of severe food deprivation across the country that are expected to worsen during the lean season for crops starting in June.
Griffiths also expressed serious concern about a rapidly worsening cholera outbreak. He cited reports of 40,000 suspected cholera cases and over 160 deaths — “a sharp increase” since last month, the majority in Houthi-controlled areas “where hundreds of new cases are reported every day.”