From Sea to River: The Ongoing Palestinian Tragedy

A report by Ahmad Abdallah, English adaptation by Nadine Sassine 

Prior to the Nakba in 1948, the natural area of Palestine extended over 27,000 square kilometers. 

However, the Western powers promised the Jews a state on this land, leading to the arrival of immigrants from various parts of the world who were transported by ships to the shores of Palestinian cities. They began establishing settlements by displacing and expelling the landowners, ultimately resulting in their deaths.

With this occupation, the area of Palestinian land shrunk to one-fifth of its original size, amounting to no more than 6,000 square kilometers, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Despite the United Nations recognizing this area as Palestinian since 1967, Israeli activities, including occupation and settlement expansion, have continued over the years.

Today, on the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, Palestinians are living through a new tragedy. Over the past seven months, approximately two million Palestinians have been displaced, and the ongoing war has claimed the lives of at least 35,000 Gazans, with tens of thousands more injured. Families have been annihilated and erased from civil records, entire neighborhoods have been destroyed, leaving parts of Gaza unrecognizable compared to before the war.

Despite all this, the number of Palestinians inside and outside Palestinian territories has multiplied tenfold since the Nakba. From 2.065 million in 1948 to 14.63 million in 2023, they are distributed as follows: 5.5 million reside in the State of Palestine, and another 1.75 million in the lands of 1948. The rest are spread between 6.56 million in Arab countries and 772,000 in foreign countries.
Through a simple calculation, it becomes apparent that the number of Palestinians residing in the historical land of Palestine is 7.25 million people, roughly equivalent to the Jewish population of 7.2 million. While Palestinians live on just 15% of their land, the Israeli population occupies 85% of the occupied territories.

All these indicators increasingly concern Israel day by day, revealing the continuous failure of the Israeli extermination policy over decades in eradicating the Palestinian people. 

Instead, they foreshadow demographic realities that pose a deep-seated concern for Israelis and the future of their relationship with the owners of the occupied land. 

This annual commemoration of the Nakba comes at an exceptional time in the history of Palestine and its cause, with over 134,000 Palestinians having fallen victim to ongoing bloodshed since the Nakba, with no horizon in sight to halt it.