GAZA, (PIC)
In the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Nakba is no longer just an annual anniversary recalled in speeches and events, but has transformed into a daily reality lived by the population in all its harsh details.
After 78 years since the first displacement in 1948, the Palestinian finds himself facing continuous attempts to uproot him from his land, but with more advanced and lethal tools, based on total war, siege, and systematic destruction of the components of life.
While Palestinians were annually recalling the stories of the first refuge, the Israeli war on Gaza imposed a new reality that reproduced the scenes of the Nakba in a harsher manner.
Displacement is no longer a memory narrated by grandparents, but a daily experience lived by hundreds of thousands of Palestinians under bombardment and repeated evacuation orders.
According to the latest data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the population of the Gaza Strip decreased by about 254,000 people since the beginning of the war in October 2023, which is 10.6 percent compared to pre-war population estimates, while the population of the Strip is currently estimated at about 2.13 million people, in what Palestinian Statistics described as a severe demographic bleeding resulting from killing, displacement, and the deterioration of living conditions.
The effects of the war do not stop at human losses, but extend to reshaping the daily lives of the population. Electricity, water, food, medical treatment, and education have transformed into daily battles fought by the Palestinian for survival.
Targeting beyond the human
With the expansion of the scope of destruction, the targeting has come to affect the place itself, not just the human. Entire residential neighborhoods were erased from the map, and schools, universities, and hospitals went out of service, in a scene that Palestinians see as targeting the social and cultural environment that forms the basis of the Palestinian existence in the Strip.
According to Palestinian Statistics data, the war led to the displacement of about two million Palestinians inside the Strip, out of about 2.2 million who were living in it before the war, while destruction has come to affect the majority of the civil infrastructure.
This transformation made the issue transcend direct material losses, towards creating an environment repellent to life, driving the population to despair or forced departure under the pressure of fear, hunger, and health collapse.
Here, resistance takes a different form. Survival in Gaza has become in itself an act of steadfastness. Maintaining the bare minimum of daily life has become part of the battle for existence above the ground.
Mothers search daily for food amid a severe shortage of basic materials, and patients face increasing difficulty in obtaining medicines and treatment, while students continue their education in destroyed schools or inside shelter centers.
Even during repeated displacement, Palestinians try to maintain a form of normal life, in a continuous attempt to emphasize their adherence to their right to live with dignity.
Displacement without a survival space
With the continuation of evacuation orders and bombardment, the scenes of the first refuge returned to the forefront. Families move from one area to another, carrying what remained of simple belongings and heavy memories, searching for a safer place.
But the difference today is that the survival space itself is narrowing in an unprecedented way. Population overcrowding, widespread destruction, and the continuation of military operations have made many of the displacement areas lack the simplest components of life, while the population lives in a state of continuous humanitarian and psychological exhaustion.
Estimates by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics indicate that the number of Palestinians around the world reached about 15.49 million people by the end of 2025, more than half of whom reside outside historical Palestine, including 6.82 million in Arab countries, in a reflection of the continuation of the effects of the Nakba and the extended refuge since 1948.
Uprooting policy
In this context, the writer and political analyst Dr. Amira Al-Nahal said that what is happening in Gaza represents a blatant model of a systematic uprooting policy targeting the human and the components of his survival.
She added, in statements to the PIC, that the targeting is no longer limited to bombardment and destruction, but has extended to dismantling the foundations of daily life through targeting water, electricity, food, hospitals, universities, shelter centers, and even the collective memory associated with the place and identity.
Al-Nahal believes that what is happening transcends the boundaries of traditional military confrontation, to reflect an attempt to produce an environment repellent to life, in which the Palestinian is pushed towards forced displacement under the pressure of hunger, fear, and health collapse.
She stressed that targeting the civil infrastructure does not affect the stone only, but strikes the ability of the Palestinian society to continue and maintain its cohesion, pointing out that the Palestinian faces today a modern reproduction of the same idea of uprooting, but with more advanced and lethal tools, and in light of a widespread international silence towards the ongoing humanitarian tragedy in the Strip.
