Yusuf Abu Hamam marks Nakba in Gaza City as displacement deepens
Yusuf Abu Hamam walked with his grandchildren and son through the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, past buildings destroyed during Israeli air and ground operations as Palestinians in Gaza marked the Nakba. Many in Gaza compared the present bombardment and mass displacement with the 1948 expulsion that forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes.
Abu Hamam was among those speaking through memory and present loss at the same time. He was expelled from his town during the first Israeli-Arab war in 1948, making the anniversary personal as he moved through a landscape of ruin with family members beside him.
Shati Refugee Camp in Gaza City
The comparison to 1948 came from lived experience, not theory. The Nakba refers to the mass expulsion of Palestinians during the creation of Israel, and Palestinians in Gaza marked its anniversary while describing the current war as worse than the original displacement.
Abu Hamam’s walk through Shati placed that comparison in plain view. The destroyed buildings around him were part of the backdrop to a commemoration rooted in loss, family continuity, and the fact that one generation’s displacement is now being revisited by another.
Khan Younis Tent Camp
In Khan Younis, Ne’man Abu Jarad pushed a cart loaded with jerrycans filled with water with his daughter on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, in a tent camp for displaced Palestinians. He later carried his granddaughter, Hour Abu Jarad, while talking with a neighbor.
Majida Abu Jarad, also in the camp, placed a pillow on a bed inside the tent where she lives with her family. Those scenes gave the anniversary its sharpest contrast: a historical event remembered through a present-day life organized around tents, water containers, and the smallest routines of shelter.
1948 and Gaza’s Present
The friction in this story is not abstract. The same date that marks a historical expulsion now arrives while Palestinians in Gaza are living through mass displacement of their own, and the anniversary is being used to measure one catastrophe against another.
For families in Shati and Khan Younis, the next development is not a speech or a ceremony but whether they remain in place, move again, or continue living inside camps that already stand in for a longer exile.
