On May 5, 2025, the Israeli security cabinet approved a plan to escalate military operations in Gaza, seize more territory, and cement long-term control. As images of emaciated children flood the media amid an ever-deepening humanitarian crisis, Israel declared its intent to make its occupation of Gaza permanent. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described a mission to “conquer all of Gaza.”
The plan outlines large-scale forced displacement, funnelling Gaza’s 2.3 million residents into the already devastated southern corridor between Khan Younis and Rafah—regions torn apart by relentless aerial bombardment.
Mainstream Israeli society has increasingly embraced decades of far-right rhetoric. “Occupation” is no longer a word many shy away from.
Israel’s decision to permanently occupy Gaza is a brutal continuation of history.
This May marks 77 years since the Nakba, the violent expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians in 1948 to make way for the Israeli state. Back then, villages were obliterated, families scattered, and ethnic cleansing solidified Israeli sovereignty.
Baseel Saleh, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement in Toronto, told Spring Magazine, “The Nakba is not a memory. It is a living, breathing colonial structure. What was set into motion in 1948 continues today in the form of siege, starvation, carpet bombing, and mass displacement.”
Today, Israel has demolished homes, destroyed nearly every hospital, and erased universities from the map. Agricultural fields are flattened, while schools and churches are in ruins. Over the last 19 months, the death toll exceeds 55,000 Palestinians. The final count will likely surpass 200,000 once the bodies under the rubble are uncovered.
The Nakba is not merely history; it is an ongoing system perpetuated through war, siege, and displacement.
A colonial blueprint reaffirmed
After October 7, 2023, a leaked Israeli intelligence memo exposed the “Sinai option”—a plan to expel Palestinians into Egypt. Though presented as a contingency, it echoes a long-standing objective: to remove Palestinians and prevent their return, continuing the ethnic cleansing that began in 1948.
The plan gained traction in January 2025, when Donald Trump, newly re-elected, publicly endorsed the forced relocation of Palestinians to Egypt or Jordan and re-authorized shipments of 2,000-pound bombs.
Israel’s objective to “conquer all of Gaza” is part of a broader displacement strategy—from East Jerusalem to the West Bank and now Gaza—pushed by both far-right settlers and state forces.
Mohammed Alqasem, an organizer with Labour 4 Palestine, told Spring Magazine, “The Nakba was never a single moment—it is a system that still displaces, erases, and confines us. Every demolished home, every village cut off by walls, every child growing up under siege is part of that ongoing catastrophe.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has made it clear that Israel will not return seized land in Gaza. Speaking in the West Bank, he declared that Gaza “will be entirely destroyed” and predicted mass civilian departure to third countries, expressing hope for annexation under the current government.
U.S. influence is unmistakable, given President Donald Trump’s ongoing Middle East visit. Washington and Tel Aviv are pushing for a U.S.-led provisional government to oversee Gaza post-war, excluding both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
The U.S. plan mirrors the logic of the British Mandate: denying Palestinian sovereignty while enabling foreign control and displacement. Under the Mandate (1920–1948), Britain administered Palestine, claiming to prepare it for self-rule while facilitating Zionist expansion. This colonial framework armed and protected Zionist militias, which would form the Israeli army and execute Plan Dalet in 1948, forcibly depopulating Palestinian towns.
The logic remains unchanged: sovereignty denied, displacement renewed, and the Nakba carried forward.
Mass starvation as policy
Even as bulldozers reshape Gaza, the blockade tightens around the territory’s throat—a coordinated policy of starvation designed to complete what bombs and bullets began.
Since March 2, 2025, Israel has barred all supplies, including food, water, and medicine, from entering Gaza. This blockade coincides with ongoing aerial bombardments.
Mass starvation looms. Aid trucks sit idle, unable to enter. Survivors of bombings are succumbing to hunger and thirst. Children—already the majority of the dead—are the primary victims of the famine.
“Safe zones” bombed, burned, and abandoned
As of May 2025, Israeli forces have repeatedly struck areas in Gaza labeled as “safe zones” for displaced civilians. Despite their designation, places like Al-Mawasi and UN-run schools have been bombed repeatedly. Gaza authorities report over 230 attacks on shelters, including a May 6 airstrike on a school in Al Bureij that killed at least 30 people. In Al-Mawasi alone, over 217 Palestinians have died in similar strikes since May 2024.
In late 2024, a missile hit a shelter in Rafah, killing over 50 people, primarily women and children. The blast set tents ablaze, trapping victims in fire and smoke. The images—burned shelters, charred bodies, silent screams—left an indelible scar on global consciousness.
These are not isolated incidents. They reflect a deadly pattern: civilians are told to flee to “safe zones,” only to be carpet-bombed where they run.
Now, as Israel mobilizes 60,000 troops under a new plan, Palestinians are once again being herded into “safe zones.” History warns of what may follow: not refuge, but mass graves.
The Nakba is a structure
The Nakba is not a singular moment in time, but a structure—an ongoing system of displacement and domination, designed to fracture a people from their land and from one another.
Yet, Alqasem reminds us, “Palestinians resist the consequences of this structure and its very foundations. The roots of olive trees push back against bulldozers; memories passed down across generations defy erasure. This resistance, deeply rooted in the soil and soul, gives form to Palestinian survival.”
Saleh added, “For 77 years, Palestinians have refused erasure. In the face of massacres, invasions, and forced exile, our people have never stopped resisting…. This Nakba Day, we act with renewed urgency. The stakes are life and death, and our people face not only bombs and bullets, but a system built to make our existence unbearable. Yet we endure. We resist. Because dismantling the structure of the Nakba means reclaiming our future.”
This weekend, the Palestinian Youth Movement and others are organizing rallies to commemorate Nakba Day. To find a rally near you, click here. For more information, follow @palestinianyouthmovement on Instagram.
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