What is the Nakba? What are Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere protesting over?

I want to share with you one Nakba story, #MyNakbaStory in this thread.

Have a look at this picture from Palestine. The young man on the left is my Sido (grandfather). This is from the late 1920s to early 1930s. My great grandmother is seated in the foreground with her three sons behind her. They are from al-Lyd.

My great grandfather is not pictured because he died at a young age when my Sido was a toddler. This meant my great grandmother had a be a hero and raise three boys on her own, uneducated and illiterate, she worked what jobs she could to raise them.

It also meant that my Sido’s opportunities were limited as he needed to work at a very early age and left school after the 4th grade. This hardship also meant that it would be some time before he could afford to get married and take on the expenses of family life.

That day finally came in the early 1940s when he married my Teta (grandmother). This is a photo of them on their wedding day.

Despite an early upbringing of hardship, things were starting to look up for my Sido and Teta in Palestine. Working as a Jeweler's apprentice he slowly but steadily built his life.

They bought a new home in neighboring Ramle, which had once long ago been the capital of Palestine before the crusades, and they started a family. Finally, for my Sido, he had a chance to provide for his children the upbringing he was denied by tragedy.

But then the Nakba happened and tragedy would strike again. From 1947-1949 the vast majority of the native inhabitants of Palestine were expelled and denied reentry by Zionist militias and then the new state of Israel.

Al-Lyd and Ramle were in the crosshairs and in the summer of 1948, 70 years ago, the orders were given for the Israeli troops to “drive out” the inhabitants of both towns. Al-Lyd was besieged for several days and massacres took place before it fell.

Seeing what happened in neighboring al-Lyd, the residents of Ramle left under the threat of a similar fate. My Sido and Teta and their young children were among the tens of thousands forced from these towns.

For many, especially in al-Lyd, the coming days meant a death march in the striking summer heat with little more than what they could carry. Many people, particularly children, died during the death march toward Jordanian lines.

From Ramle many were evacuated from depots where cars or wagons would pick them up and take them to the Jordanian lines but something happened to my Sido and Teta when they got there. They were told they were no longer taking refugees!

They were stuck. Unable to go back to their home and unable to make it to the Jordanian line, they became IDPs (internally displaced persons). By the time the dust settled, my Sido’s home, that he spent his life struggling to buy, was taken over by Jewish settlers.

My Sido and Teta were confined along with a number of other IDPs to Ramle’s old city which the Israeli military had ghettoized. Their relatives were strewn all over the place, some to Gaza, some to the West bank, others to Jordan, others elsewhere.

They remained behind, alienated in their own land, down the road from their own home which they were denied return to and forced to live in a ghetto.

In the 1950s, the Israelis created laws that allowed them to launder land. This included something called the Absentee Property Law. This law said if the owners of the land were “absent” then the state would take over the land.

Of course by denying the refugee owners return, the state was ensuring they were "absent". Ultimately, the Israeli state came to “legally” control some 90%+ of the land in the state.

But my Sido wasn’t absent. He was a “present absentee” this was a category of people who were not present on the land they owned but still living in the state. My Sido was living in a ghetto down the road.

For years he labored to rebuild his life, this time as a minority discriminated against in Israel, living in a ghetto and relegated to manual and often hard labor. And he never gave up on his dream to go back to his house.

After years of nagging the courts and literally dragging a local Israeli judge to see the house he owned taken over by squatters and the ghettoized home he was confined to, my Sido realized a Palestinian dream. He was told he could return…..but there was a catch.

He won the right to buy out the squatters in his home and he did. He bought his own house, twice, just to continue living in it. It was insult added to injury and it took two decades, but my Sido and his family finally restarted the life in the home he built in the early 1940s.

But this was not the same life. Yes, he was back in his house, but his society was destroyed. His family members flung across the region, many he wouldn’t see again for decades if ever.

He would go on to live as a “demographic threat” in the eyes of the state that governed him. And yet, he was one of the lucky ones.

The vast majority of Palestinians are waiting to return until this day. Countless families were uprooted from homes destroyed or usurped and remain languishing in refugee camps today. All because Israel doesn’t want them to come back because they are not Jewish.

This process has not stopped as taking land from Palestinians continues to this day and violent and often brutal, deadly force is used to quash any opposition to it. Those in Gaza are gunned down for simply wanting to go home and realize the dreams of their Sidos and Tetas.

Every. Single. Refugee has a Nakba story.

This was just one Nakba story. This is #MyNakbaStory.

I hope when you hear of Palestinians protesting for their right to return and wish to end the Nakba you may now have a better idea what it is all about.