Dawud Assad still has nightmares of the day Jewish militias attacked his village of Deir Yassin outside Jerusalem 76 years ago. Assad, then 16, peered out his front window to see his village ablaze. As his uncles shot back at the militias firing upon them, Assad escaped. But more than 100 Palestinians, including women, children and elderly people, were killed in what is now referred to as the Deir Yassin massacre.
Even before 1948, a series of events and declarations paved the way for the traumatic event that would shape what Palestinians see as a decades-long struggle for justice and their right to return, something Israel has denied them. “This process of displacement has been going on for over a century now,” said Beshara Doumani, a professor of Palestinian studies at Brown University.
The overwhelming majority of Palestinians became displaced after the Nakba, even if they didn’t leave Palestine,” said Doumani. More Palestinians fled in the years after 1948, including during the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza. Some fled for a second time. Many of the now six million Palestinian refugees and their descendants live in slum-like urban refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
The refugees and their descendants make up around 75% of Gaza’s population. Hamas killed some 1,200 people and took another 250 hostage during its Oct. 7 attack. Israel responded with one of the heaviest military onslaughts in recent history, killing more than 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
Across the Middle East, Palestinians are marking the Nakba with their eyes on the war in Gaza. Demonstrations and educational events are planned. In Chile, which has what is considered the largest Palestinian community outside the Middle East, events and actions that highlight the Nakba will take place throughout May. There are events planned across the U.S., too. In Washington, D.C.
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