DEIR AL-BALAH: Blink and you might miss the few stone walls that are all that’s left of the village that Yusuf Abu Hamam’s family was forced to flee when he was an infant in 1948.
The village, Al-Joura, was demolished by the Israeli military at the time. It has since vanished under neighborhoods of the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon and the grounds of a national park.
The neighborhood where Abu Hamam’s family ended up — and where he spent most of his life — now lies also largely in ruins. Buildings in the Shati Camp in the northern Gaza Strip have been razed and wrecked by Israeli bombardment and demolitions during the past 2½ years of war.
On Friday, Abu Hamam and millions of Palestinians mark the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” referring to the mass expulsion and flight of some 750,000 Palestinians from what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. It’s the third commemoration of the Nakba since the war in Gaza began.
The 78-year-old Abu Hamam, one of a dwindling number of Nakba survivors, says the current war is an even greater catastrophe.
