RAMALLAH: Thousands of Palestinians everywhere in the world today marks the 76th anniversary of the Nakba of 1948, when nearly 750,000 indigenous Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes in historic Palestine by invading Zionist militias.
The word “Nakba” means “catastrophe” in Arabic, and refers to the systematic ethnic cleansing of two-thirds of the Palestinian population at the time by Zionist paramilitaries between 1947-1949 and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society.
During the events that led to the establishment of today’s Israel, Zionist forces took more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, ethnically cleansed and destroyed about 530 villages and cities, and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in a series of mass atrocities, including more than 70 massacres.
This year marks 76 years of Al-Nakba, or the Palestinian experience of dispossession and loss of a homeland. The anniversary comes at a time where many people around the globe are angered by the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, which has so far killed 35,173 Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom were children and women, and injured 79,061 while thousands of victims remain under the rubble.
