Yusuf Abu Hamam’s life sits at the intersection of two wars separated by 78 years but tied together by the same outcome: displacement, erasure, and a shrinking sense of home in Gaza.

All that remains of al-Joura, the village his family fled in 1948, are fragments of stone walls scattered across what is now southern Israel.

Israeli forces demolished the village during the war surrounding Israel’s creation.

In the years that followed, its land was absorbed into the expanding city of Ashkelon and later incorporated into landscaped areas and a national park, leaving almost no visible trace of the original community.

For Abu Hamam, al-Joura is not a place he remembers firsthand. He was an infant when his family left. But it has defined the shape of his life, passed down as memory rather than experience, absence rather than presence.

That absence was replaced by Shati Camp in northern Gaza, where his family settled among waves of refugees who arrived after 1948.

What began as tents on sand gradually turned into a dense urban neighborhood under U.N. administration. It became home, not by choice but by permanence.

Reduced to rubble

Today, that permanence has been shattered. Over 2.5 years of war, Shati Camp has been heavily damaged by Israeli bombardment and demolitions.

Residential blocks have been flattened, streets buried under debris, and familiar landmarks erased or rendered unrecognizable.

For Abu Hamam, the destruction does not represent a single moment of loss but another layer added to an already long history of displacement.

The place that replaced his lost village has itself been transformed into ruins.

Marking 78 years of the Nakba

On Friday, Palestinians mark the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, Arabic for "catastrophe,” referring to the mass displacement of an estimated 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.

Abu Hamam is among the remaining survivors of that generation. For him, the commemoration is not only historical but immediate.

"There is no country left,” he said, speaking beside what remains of his damaged home in Gaza. "A square kilometer and a half extending from the sea, this is what we are living in. It’s indescribable, unbearable.”

His words reflect a present reality shaped by shrinking space, repeated displacement, and the loss of infrastructure that once defined everyday life.

A territory compressed by war

More than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza have been pushed into increasingly limited areas along the Mediterranean coast. Large portions of the territory are either under Israeli military control or left in ruins after sustained bombardment and ground operations.

According to U.N. estimates, around 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced since the war began. Many now live in makeshift camps, where basic services are scarce and shelter is fragile, exposed to both winter cold and summer heat.

Abu Hamam’s experience reflects this broader compression. He has been forced into smaller and smaller spaces as neighborhoods disappear around him.

The legacy of 1948, still unfolding

The Nakba fundamentally reshaped Palestinian society. Roughly 80% of Palestinians living in what became Israel were displaced during and after the 1948 war. Around 530 villages were destroyed, according to Palestinian statistical data.

Al-Joura was one of them. Historical accounts, including military records referenced by Israeli historian Benny Morris, describe orders issued during the Israeli advance in late 1948 to demolish villages in captured areas to prevent the return of Palestinian residents.

The result was a long-term refugee population concentrated in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, now numbering in the millions.

In Gaza, refugee camps established under the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) became permanent urban spaces over decades, absorbing successive generations born into displacement rather than experiencing it as a temporary condition.

Camps that became cities, and cities that became ruins

Shati Camp is one example of that transformation. Built initially for tents and temporary shelter, it evolved into one of Gaza’s most densely populated areas. Families built homes, schools, and businesses, turning a refugee camp into a functioning urban district.

The current war has reversed much of that development. Entire sections of Gaza’s refugee camps have been destroyed, including infrastructure that took decades to build.

What once represented survival after 1948 has now become another landscape of destruction.

A second generation of mass displacement

The experience of Ne’man Abu Jarad and his wife Majida shows a different but connected layer of this history. Their families were already living in Gaza in 1948, and they recall stories of refugees arriving on foot from villages further north, including places like al-Joura.

They did not experience the original Nakba as displacement from outside Gaza. Instead, they describe the current war as a continuation in intensity and scale.

Entire neighborhoods in northern Gaza, including Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, have been heavily damaged or destroyed. Satellite imagery and field reports show widespread demolition and the construction of new military positions in areas that were once residential.

In the south, Rafah, once home to hundreds of thousands, has also been devastated, leaving large areas uninhabitable.

Repeated displacement as a way of life

Over the course of the war, the Abu Jarad family has been displaced more than a dozen times. Each move follows a similar pattern: evacuation under fire, temporary shelter in overcrowded areas, then another forced relocation as fighting shifts.

They now live in a tent in Khan Younis. The shelter offers little protection from weather extremes, and conditions inside are increasingly unstable.

Their children have been out of school for more than two years, part of a broader collapse of education across Gaza.

Majida Abu Jarad describes this cycle as fundamentally different from 1948.

"In ’48, people were displaced once and stayed,” she said. "Here, we are displaced again and again. There is no stability.”

Loss of homes, and loss of records

The destruction extends beyond housing. Across Gaza, families have lost personal archives, photographs, documents and records that once anchored identity and legal status.

UNRWA, the U.N. agency that has long managed refugee services, holds one of the largest archives documenting Palestinian displacement. Even that system has been disrupted by the war, with staff forced to evacuate offices and relocate critical records under difficult conditions to prevent their loss.

Without such documentation, families risk losing access to refugee registration and civil identity records, which are central to aid and legal recognition.

For many, the loss is irreversible. Majida Abu Jarad says her family photographs were destroyed when their home in Beit Hanoun was hit.

"There is nothing left,” she said.

A war measured in absence

The toll of the current war in Gaza is staggering. According to local health authorities, more than 72,700 Palestinians have been killed since it began following Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023 incursion into southern Israel, which killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage.

In Gaza, the destruction is also spatial. Entire districts have been flattened, leaving behind landscapes where familiar geography no longer exists.

Abu Hamam describes it as total erasure.

"When this war came, it devoured trees, stones and people,” he said. "Entire families were erased from the civil registry. Hundreds of families are still buried under the rubble.”