On the anniversary of our First Nakba... The Nakba unfolds again, only more severe

A Report by Land Research Center on the 77th Anniversary of the First Palestinian Nakba (1948)

"After they shot her husband and her five-year-old son before her eyes, she pleaded them to let her two-year-old son to live, and promised to leave the house immediately. The soldier released a wicked smile as he shot the two-year-old, indifferent to his screams or his mother’s cries. They then slit her abdomen while she was still alive, and ribbed her unborn child, and finally killed her, to silence the screams and cries that had disturbed them..."

— Testimony of an Israeli soldier, Deir Yassin Massacre, 9 April 1948

This is a glimpse of the First Palestinian Nakba. The settler militias stole land, destroyed cities and villages, forcibly displaced, killed and tormented the Indigenous People, brutally violated and raped Palestinian women.

Palestinian Member of HIC, Land Research Center – Jerusalem, has memorialized al-Nakba (the catastrophe) that premised the proclamation of the State of Israel on 15 May 1948. The colonial atrocities of that series of events has not subsided, but returned with a vengeance against Palestinian resistance, but extended now to the whole of the Palestinian people occupied by Israel since 1967.

The barbarity of al-Nakba mirrors the massacres unfolding today in Gaza. From one Nakba to the other, the Palestinian tragedy has only deepened, and Israeli crimes only become more brutal, and none of the leaders of modern colonial powers, led by the United States, blinked an eye at these bloodthirsty Israeli crimes. They have rendered international law in tatters, worthless in the eyes of leaders such as Biden, Trump, von der Leyen and Netanyahu.

War crimes committed by the British Mandate army and Zionist militias in the First Nakba, the 1948 war and the establishment of the settler colony named “Israel”:

- Around 25,000 Palestinians killed—approximately 2% of the population at the time (1948).

- 774 communities, about 60% of all Palestinian urban and rural centers (531 Palestinian villages destroyed, with 243 other towns/villages) either demolished and/or depopulated by force.

- Some 154–156,000 Palestinian homes (about 70% of all Palestinian homes in 1948) destroyed or emptied (to favor incoming Jewish settlers).

- 932,000 Palestinians forcibly displaced from their homes and farmlands (650,000 fled or were expelled abroad, 250,000 took refuge in the West Bank and truncated Gaza Governorate, including 32,000 displaced during the British Mandate), totaling about 72% of the Palestinian population at the time.

In the post-Nakba years, Israel consolidated its military doctrine of targeting Palestinian homes, shelters and shelter seekers, which it pursues to this day. From 1951 to 1953, Israeli forces forcibly transferred Palestinians in the southern Naqab into a tight enclosure upon demolishing 108 villages and village points across the region. Israel expanding attacks on Palestinian homes and villages across the Jordanian border provoked the 1967 War.

The Nakba continues…

Read the full LRC Nakba Day report here.