‘I am living another Nakba’: 90-year-old Palestinian survivor on Gaza war

Fatima Khamees Alyaan Abu-Shammala was just a teenager when she was forced to flee her home during the Nakba – the ‘great catastrophe’ – of 1948 when Zionist militias backed by the Israeli military drove out an estimated 700,000 Palestinians from their native land.

Born in 1934, she had a happy childhood in her native village of Beit Dras, about 30 km northeast of Gaza City, known for its abundant citrus trees – orange and lemon – besides its fertile farmlands of wheat and olive.

The 90-year-old, who now lives in Deir al Balah with her four sons and grandchildren, has vivid memories of her childhood and Beit Dras.

As Israel once again forces millions of Palestinians to flee their homes in Gaza and other occupied territories, Fatima is reliving the horrors of the Nakba.

Suffering from hypertension and diabetes, Fatima’s health has deteriorated since October last year when Israel’s bloody war triggered an acute shortage of food and medication in Gaza, besides killing more than 35,000 people in just over seven months.

This is Fatima’s account of the 1948 Nakba, in her own words. It is also the story of every Palestinian, brutalised by Israel for decades and made refugees in their own land.

What happened then

I was a young girl in 1948, barely 14, and enjoying my childhood without a care in the world. I loved playing hide-and-seek with my siblings and friends, helping my mother with cooking, and going out to collect firewood.

I didn’t get any education, but our life was full of love and beauty. We had everything at that time.

We were five – my parents, brother, sister, and me – in a huge house with a big courtyard, a clay oven, a chicken pen, and a land full of apricot trees and herbs.

It was a lovely, memory-filled, and unforgettable life. But we had no clue of the horrors that would follow soon.

On the afternoon of May 15, 1948, we saw people of the village packing up their belongings and leaving their houses.

We could sense something was wrong. As we rushed to see what was happening, we saw soldiers and armed men in military vehicles on the streets. They were shooting nonstop at the people in their houses.

Everything was happening very fast.

We knew it was time to leave. We just took our IDs, land documents and some clothes. We did not forget to lock the house and take the keys, hoping we would return soon.

Around a month before the Nakba, my mother gave birth to our youngest sibling – my only brother. When we were forced to leave our houses, my father covered him with his jacket and carried him on his shoulders.

We kept walking as we tried to move as far away from the violence and the armed Israelis.

Our destination was Khan Younis, about 80 km from our village. But it took us about 20 days to reach it.

We slept by the roadside at night and walked during the day. Progress was slow and painful. We were hungry and exhausted, both mentally and physically. Our only food was flatbread made on a woodfire.

A tent in Khan Younis became our home for three years. We were refugees in our own country.

Life was hard, and the future bleak. We could barely find flour to make flatbread, and we often slept on empty stomachs, not knowing when the next meal would come.

But even in Khan Younis, there was no end to our sufferings. Israeli soldiers frequently raided Khan Younis and took many of our men to execute them.

I saw people carrying the bodies of their loved ones on their shoulders to the graveyard. Those heart-rending scenes have remained with me all these years.

Along with other displaced families, we got the keys to a new house in Khan Younis.

A few years later, I got married to a man from Deir al Balah and moved in with him to start my own family.

Many years have passed since we were forcefully expelled from our village, but the wound has remained fresh.

I have a house now, but it still doesn’t feel like home.

Past imperfect, present tense

Those who had survived the Nakba of 1948 had hoped that our people would not have to go through that pain again. How wrong we were.

For the past seven months, our oppressor and tormentor – the state of Israel – has heaped untold misery on our people again. They have rained bombs and bullets on us, killed innocent children and women and turned our believed Gaza into a graveyard.

I can’t remember a day I have slept well in the past seven months. I wake up to the sound of explosions and gunfire, to the sound of panic-stricken cries of fellow-Palestinians as Israel bombards Deir al Balah.

In Khan Younis, the Israeli army killed all members of my family from my mother’s side over the past few months. Almost every Palestinian family has suffered similar tragedies.

Even though I am at home here, I still live the same miserable life where I hardly have one meal per day. Sometimes, I don’t eat anything but some stale bread. It’s the same story for my sons and their children.

Sometimes, I walk outside for some time. I see tents along the street and people struggling to find shelter.

My heart breaks when I see people run behind the water trucks for a jar of the life-saving elixir and how they queue up to get a few morsels of food from charity organisations.

I feel for my people because they simply don’t deserve this life. I hope this war ends now so that people can return to their homes. We need to feel we’re living. Nothing more.

As for me, I am living another Nakba.

As long as Israel continues to murder us, destroy our houses, and steal our lands, it's Nakba over and over again.

I hope I will live to see the day when Palestine is free again.