The Anniversary of the Nakba

Nations usually commemorate joyful events and honorable milestones. That is why countries celebrate Independence Day or National Day. Russians commemorate the heroism of Siege of Leningrad and Battle of Stalingrad and their victory over the Germans. Italians celebrate national unity. Americans commemorate independence from United Kingdom. The French celebrate the storming of the Storming of the Bastille. And so on.

Yet as seventy-eight years pass since the loss of Palestine, we continue to remember seventy-eight years of the Nakba and the Balfour Declaration. Each year, our collective memory oscillates between catastrophe and defeat. The rest has been revolutions, coups, and massacres.

After the loss of Palestine, loss itself became a habit—a tradition almost. We lost what remained of it in the West Bank and Gaza. Egypt lost Sinai Peninsula and later regained it. Syria lost the Golan Heights. And Lebanon lost Lebanon itself. Israel destroyed its villages, altered its borders, and we continued commemorating.

On the anniversary of Palestine’s loss, negotiations continue over a temporary truce in Lebanon. We look around us and see the Israeli defense minister threatening Lebanon with the fate of Gaza—and implementation begins immediately. Three southern cities are transformed into shattered ruins.

On the seventy-eighth anniversary of Balfour, we find ourselves in 2026 negotiating over three thousand Lebanese killed within a single month and eight thousand wounded. All of this unfolds not under the declaration of war, but under the declaration of a ceasefire.

Nothing has changed in this landscape of paralysis and noise. The words I write now are the same words I used to read—or hear—every day when I was a boy. And every year I believed that I would not read them again the following year, that perhaps we would finally win a battle—or at the very least avoid losing the next war.

But in our region, things refuse to change.

Wars remain wars among ourselves. The blocked road remains the road to Jerusalem. Everything has become indistinguishable: death and life, victory and defeat, knowledge and ignorance, hunger and dignity, celebration and disgrace.

Between what happened in 1948 and what has unfolded since October 7, the only real difference lies in the scale of disaster and destruction. In the past, the number of victims was smaller and the tragedies less immense. Today, we live in the age of digital killing, where catastrophes know no limits.

Nor does hatred among us.

And all of it continues under the same banner: Palestine, the road to Jerusalem, and the villages and towns of the South.

Quoted from: Asharq Al-Awsat Newspaper