How Israel’s war in Gaza has revived memories of 1948 displacement

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The war in Gaza has displaced nearly 90 percent of its 2.2 million residents, who are compelled to displace repeatedly as bombardment and evacuation orders continue. The experience to the Abu Samras and other similar families appears to be repeat history. Their patriarch was first displaced as a child in 1948 during what Palestinians call the Nakba, or "the catastrophe." And today, nearly 80 years after his initial displacement, he again is homeless, hungry and fearful that this exile could last for many years, the New York Times reported.

A cycle of displacements

Generations of Gazans have been uprooted from their homes since Israel began its military campaign after the Hamas-led attacks on October 7. The United Nations estimates nearly two million people have been displaced from their neighbourhoods, many of whom moved into tents or temporary housing. Those who live there describe leaving, thinking they would return in a few days, only to find nothing was left where their homes once stood. It now projects that it could take as long as 80 years to rebuild Gaza's destroyed housing stock, the World Bank said.

Echoes of 1948

For the Palestinians, the displacement of today evokes the horror of 1948, when more than 700,000 were forced out of their villages in the war to establish Israel. Families hold onto keys to homes that they never once laid eyes on again, passing them down as symbols of the "right to return." Now, as keys to northern Gaza homes stay in the hands of the recently displaced, citizens fear their stories will be those of their grandparents—promises to return that were never fulfilled.

Israel's justification and worldwide criticism

Israeli commanders maintain evacuation orders are temporary, meant to protect civilians from fighting in urban neighbourhoods that Hamas has dug into. But international human rights groups and U.N. officials have warned that the destruction and mass displacement appear to have the ultimate goal of irreversibly redrawing Gaza's demography. There has been rhetoric from some Israeli leaders that has fuelled such fears. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said troops were "obliterating everything that's left of the Gaza Strip" in what he described as "conquering, cleansing and remaining in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed."

Life in exile

Abdallah Abu Samra, aged 87 now, sees the parallels to his young life unpardonable. He lives in a weak tent in southern Gaza, surviving on money his family abroad sends him, too frail to flee again. His relatives are spread out all over Gaza, Egypt and temporary camps. His granddaughter Ghada, who managed to flee for Cairo, still keeps the key to her relatives' destroyed house. "Will the keys become like the 1948 keys of return?" she questioned, trying to muster despair and hope for return.

A community losing hope Gaza's reality—famine in some areas, continuous shelling, and virtual destruction of all infrastructure except for a few tourist sites—has led most Palestinians to believe that they may never go back. Human rights advocates warn that encouraging "voluntary"

departure in these conditions amounts to ethnic cleansing. Déjà vu is frightening for families like the Abu Samras.

“We are in a bigger Nakba now,” said Abdallah, echoing what many in Gaza fear: that the displacement of 2023–25 may become permanent, just as it did in 1948.

And with the war going on, the Nakba recurred, again and again, as a lived past, reincarnated for each new generation. Gaza's exodus has not only become a humanitarian catastrophe but also political shorthand, one which threatens to write another page of permanent diaspora into Palestinian identity. To the uprooted, the horror is simple and primal: that they would never return home.