A week before the commemoration of Nakba Day, the Israeli government announced a new ground offensive in Gaza to establish a sustained presence. It's not a coincidence or a purely strategic decision. It's a deliberate gesture. An affirmation of continuity with the political project that in 1948 forcibly displaced more than 700,000 Palestinians to found the State of Israel on the ruins.
Nakba – which means catastrophe– is not just a historical date. It's a persistent structure. What we are experiencing today in Gaza is the most brutal expression of this logic: more than 52,000 people have been killed, mostly civilians. Israel has imposed a total siege—without food, fuel, or medical care—destroyed hospitals, and forced the population to relocate again and again. Now, a prolonged occupation of the territory is also being announced. The objective is not hidden: to redesign Gaza without the population.
This pattern is not new. In the occupied territories, in East Jerusalem or within the state of Israel itself, the Palestinian people are subjected to a system that combines legal apartheid, daily violence, and continuous dispossession. Even Palestinians with Israeli citizenship—the so-called Palestinians of '48—live under discriminatory laws, with unequal access to services and systematic surveillance. nation-state law The 2018 elections made it clear that only the Jewish people have the right to self-determination.
The most disturbing thing is that all this is happening with international complicity. The United States continues to send weapons and veto UN resolutions. The European Union maintains economic and diplomatic relations with Israel while downplaying the crimes in Gaza. Several companies we use every day—Google, Amazon, HP, and Airbnb—actively collaborate with the employment regime or benefit from it. Without external support, this project could not be sustained.
Gaza is not the only open wound. The ongoing genocide in Sudan or the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo show other forms of systematic dehumanization that also remain silent. The causes are different, but the result is the same: millions of expendable lives, converted into footnotes to our comfort.
Faced with all this, there is a clear way to act: Demand that our governments end their complicity. Break institutional and commercial relations with apartheid. Boycott those who benefit from violence. It is no coincidence that a law is being pushed in the United States to further penalize boycotts against friendly countries, with Israel at the forefront. What is being criminalized is the effectiveness of our collective action.
Commemorating Nakba is not looking at the past. It is acknowledging the present. And deciding whether to remain silent—again—or act.
