People pose with placards calling for the Right to Return during a demonstration commemorating the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, in the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. AFP
In a statement marking its anniversary, Hamas said there is “no legitimacy and no sovereignty for the occupation over the land of Palestine, no matter how much time passes or how great the sacrifices,” calling on the world to “criminalize the occupation” and stop its “terrorism against our land, our people and our holy sites.”
“For 78 years, the great Palestinian people have remained steadfast on their land, holding firmly to their rights and national principles,” the movement added, warning that Israel was trying to “reshape Palestinian consciousness, undermine resistance, erase the cause, and consign it to oblivion,” efforts it said had “ended in complete failure.”
Hamas stated that the 1948 displacement of Palestinians as “a horrific and unprecedented crime in modern history,” adding that “the fascist occupation government continues to carry out” the same policies today in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and Jerusalem.
The group also said: “Resistance in all its forms is a natural and legitimate right guaranteed by international conventions, laws, and divine teachings,” rejecting “any talk of disarming the resistance while the occupation and its crimes persist.”
During the 1948 war, Zionist armed groups and militias carried out attacks and massacres across historic Palestine, leading to the forced displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians. More than 530 Palestinian villages were destroyed, while hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced into exile across Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and beyond.
Although the Nakba remains the largest mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes to date, it did not end in 1948. It continues through Israel’s war on Gaza, illegal settlement expansion, home demolitions, land confiscation, and repression in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Islamic Jihad said the anniversary comes amid “escalating American-Zionist aggression against our nation” aimed at imposing “hegemony and control over our Arab and Islamic homeland.”
The movement warned that “the Zionist project in Palestine does not target Palestine alone,” but “targets the entire Arab and Islamic nation,” citing repeated Israeli statements about expanding the scope of occupation and establishing what it called “Greater Israel.”
Islamic Jihad accused Israel of continuing “war crimes and crimes against humanity” through “the war of extermination against our people in Gaza,” as well as assaults on civilians, homes, and holy sites in the occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and inside Israel.
The group condemned the “desecration of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque” and “repeated chants hostile to Arabs and Muslims,” saying Israel was attempting to “drag the entire region into a religious war.”
It also accused Israel of waging war against Palestinian refugees through “ongoing efforts to end the work of UNRWA and erase the issue of return and refugees.”
For its part, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said “the struggle against the occupation is an existential and historical struggle,” adding that “resistance will continue until its demise.”
The group described the Nakba as “an ongoing historical crime” rooted in “uprooting, forcible displacement, massacres, ethnic cleansing, and organized terror,” saying Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem are facing “a comprehensive war of extermination, siege, starvation, and systematic destruction.”
The PFLP said “the issue of refugees is the core of the Palestinian cause,” stressing that “the right of return is a historical, legal, and humanitarian right that is inalienable and does not expire with time.”
It also reaffirmed Palestinians’ “inalienable historical rights,” including “the right of return,” “self-determination,” and “the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.”
The Front called for support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), rejecting attempts to “dry up its resources,” “undermine its political and humanitarian role,” or abolish it as “an international witness to the crime of uprooting our people from their land.”
The group further called on “the free people of the world” to expand boycott campaigns and pursue Israeli officials “as war criminals before international courts and forums,” adding that “78 years of Nakba, occupation, massacres, and siege” had not broken the Palestinian people’s will but strengthened their commitment to “liberation and return.”
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