If you think the current onslaught on Gaza started on the 7th October 2023, think again
The Catastrophe – Al-Nakba
Al-Nakba is Arabic for ‘the Catastrophe’… the word Palestinians use for what befell them 77 years ago, as a consequence of the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.
In 1917 the population of historical Palestine was about 800,000, made up of over 730,000 Palestinian Arabs and 60,000 Jews (7% of the population). By 1947, after several waves of inward migration by Jewish colonists, the population had grown to 1.75 million, of which 31% were Jewish.
1947-1949: the first wave of ethnic-cleansing
In 1947 the United Nations handed 55% of the land to the proposed new state of Israel, prompting violent ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian people – the Nakba.
Between 1948 and 1949 Jewish nationalist militias destroyed over 400 Palestinian villages and towns. They conducted at least 24 brutal massacres of civilians. In total 13,000 Palestinians died.
720,000 people (85% of the Palestinian Arab population) were driven or fled from their towns and villages to neighbouring Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. They thought they would be able to return but the land they left behind was seized by the new Israeli state.
This is why Palestinians still recall those times as ‘the Catastrophe’.
1967: the occupation of Palestinian land by Israel
In 1967 Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem (the Occupied Palestinian Territories), bringing all of Palestine under Israeli control, and began to colonise the land with settlements – illegal under international law – a process that continues today. Over 500,000 now live in these illegal settlements.
To make room for these settlements, Israel forcibly evicts Palestinians from their legally held land and demolishes their homes. The most fertile land and water resources are appropriated by the settlements for agriculture exporting some produce abroad, with some on sale in UK shops.
For Palestinians The Nakba continues in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – and today in Gaza.
The destruction of the people of GazaSince October 2023 Israel has been engaged in a brutal military campaign of genocide against the Palestinian population of 2.3 million in Gaza. To date, at least 60,000 Gazans have been murdered, the majority being women and children. Meanwhile backed by Donald Trump, Israel is openly threatening the full ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza.
Based on a leaflet distributed on a protest march in Brighton on 18 May 2025.
Sponsors of the demonstration and leaflet
Parents 4 Palestine (Sussex), Sussex Friends of Palestine, Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Brighton and Hove Stop the War Coalition.
See also how Israel has carried out perevious onslaughts on Gaza over the last 25 years – my article
