Every year on May 15, Palestinians and Arabs around the world commemorate the painful memory of the Nakba (Catastrophe)—the moment in 1948 when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were violently uprooted from their homes, launching the longest unresolved refugee crisis in modern history.
This year marks the 77th anniversary, but it arrives amid catastrophic scenes—particularly in the Gaza Strip, which today faces one of the gravest humanitarian disasters since the original Nakba, a haunting reminder that ethnic cleansing and forced erasure never truly ceased.
A Living Nakba: Displacement, Destruction, and Demographic Warfare
In a special report issued by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the Nakba is described not as a historical episode, but as a systematic, ongoing project of settler-colonial replacement, enforced daily through expulsions, demolitions, land confiscation, and settlement expansion.
Titled “The Nakba: Ongoing Ethnic Cleansing, Population Replacement, and Land Control,” the report underscores that 1948 was not a war between two sides, but a deliberate campaign of forced uprooting executed by Zionist militias, backed by Western colonial powers, to establish a state on the ruins of a living nation with deep-rooted history and culture.
Key Statistics Since 1948
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- 957,000 Palestinians—approximately 70% of the population at the time—were forcibly displaced from over 1,300 towns and villages during and after the creation of the Israeli occupation state.
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- 531 Palestinian localities were completely destroyed.
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- An additional 200,000 were displaced in the 1967 war, expanding the Palestinian diaspora across the region and the world.
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- Over 70 documented massacres were committed by Zionist forces, leaving more than 15,000 martyrs, many executed to instill fear and trigger mass flight.
Gaza: The Modern Nakba in Real Time
The report devotes special attention to Gaza, describing the 2023–2025 Israeli war as a “new Nakba with modern methods.” As of May 8, 2025, the war has resulted in:
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- Over 52,600 martyrs in Gaza—one-third of all Palestinian martyrs since 1948.
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- 57% of casualties are women and children, including over 18,000 children and 12,000 women.
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- More than 11,000 Palestinians remain missing, most of them presumed to be buried under the rubble.
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- 125,000 wounded, many left with permanent disabilities amid a collapsed healthcare system.
The devastation to Gaza’s infrastructure is staggering:
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- 68,900 buildings were completely destroyed.
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- Over 110,000 buildings damaged.
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- 330,000 housing units obliterated—over 70% of all residential structures in Gaza.
The report calls this “the Nakba of hunger”, noting that since the Israeli re-imposition of a total siege in March 2025:
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- 57 children have died of starvation
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- Tens of thousands suffer from severe malnutrition due to lack of food, medicine, clean water, and fuel.
Gaza residents receive just 3–5 litres of water per day, far below the WHO minimum of 15 litres, due to the destruction of desalination plants, power outages, and fuel shortages.
The West Bank: A Silent, Creeping Nakba
The catastrophe isn’t limited to Gaza. The West Bank is undergoing what the report calls a “silent Nakba by numbers”:
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By the end of 2024, there were 551 settlement sites, including:
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- 151 official settlements
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- 256 unauthorized outposts
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- 144 military or service installations
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In just one year:
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- Israel approved the construction of 13,000 new settlement units
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Seized over 58,000 dunams of Palestinian land under various pretexts:
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- “State land” declarations
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- “Nature reserves”
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- Military orders
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The number of settlers has surpassed 770,000, with 44% residing in the Jerusalem area—particularly in post-1967 annexed areas illegally occupied under international law. In Jerusalem, settlers now make up nearly 68% of the population.
Systematic Violence, Resilience in Numbers
The report also recorded:
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- 16,600 Israeli settler and military attacks in 2024 alone
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- 14,200 olive trees uprooted, a symbol of Palestinian connection to land
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In the first three months of 2025 alone:
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- Over 5,470 new attacks
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- Nearly 900 new military checkpoints
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- A surge in mass arrests and home raids
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Yet despite it all, the report highlights a powerful truth: Palestinian steadfastness endures.
The number of Palestinians worldwide has more than tenfold increased since 1948, reaching 15.2 million by mid-2025, with 7.4 million living in historic Palestine—creating a demographic balance with the Jewish population for the first time.
This persistence, the report concludes, is living resistance—a defiant refusal to be erased.
“The Nakba has failed to erase our memory or identity. We remain. We resist. We return.”
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