ON May 15, 2023, the Palestinian Nakba — “catastrophe” — will be 75 years old. Palestinians all over the world will commemorate the tragic occasion when nearly 800,000 Palestinians were made refugees and nearly 500 towns and villages were ethnically cleansed of their inhabitants in historic Palestine in 1947-48.

The depopulation of Palestine carried on for months – in fact, years – after the Nakba was supposedly concluded. But the Nakba has never actually concluded. Until this day, Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem, in the southern Hebron hills, in the Naqab Desert and elsewhere, are still suffering the consequences of Israel’s quest for demographic supremacy. And, of course, millions of refugees remain stateless, denied basic political and human rights.

In a speech before the UN World Conference against Racism in 2001, Palestinian intellectual Dr Hanan Ashrawi aptly described the Palestinian people as “a nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing Nakba.”