It is 1948, and the setting is Ein Karem, Jerusalem, in historic Palestine.

Leila Giries, eight, and her family are caught off guard when Zionist Jewish militias, such as the Hagana and Lehi, start rampaging through their village, massacring many of its residents and expelling survivors of the carnage. 

Fleeing the village, Giries' family takes only their house key and a few personal belongings, in the hope that they would return soon.

Fast forward to 2026.

The location is California, the western US state. And Giries is 86 now. She still remembers being forced from her land by what later became the occupying Israeli military.

She has strong memories of the separation from her family and friends during what is known as Nakba, Arabic for "catastrophe" — the 1948 violent expulsion, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing of some 750,000 Palestinians by the Zionist militias during the creation of Israel.

"Of course, everybody fled. All our family and friends. They fled because of the shelling," Giries, the Nakba survivor, tells TRT World. 

Giries recounts how her family and thousands of other Palestinians fled, expecting a swift return. "That was the last time we set foot there," she notes, adding the families couldn't take all of their belongings.

"My mom had a small bag… and she put a few belongings for me in that bag. And I still have the bag. I framed it because that's what we came out with." 

Giries says she tries to avoid recalling the Nakba, describing it as a period of profound hardship. "I was only eight years old, but I remember so much, and especially how we were separated from family and friends."

'The longing for homeland never leaves us'

Every year, May 15 marks the anniversary of the Nakba. For many Palestinians, a future of peace depends on Israel acknowledging this past. Since 1948, Palestinians have annually commemorated the day to reaffirm their right to return to their homes and villages in historic Palestine.

Arabs in general and Palestinians in specific often mark May 15 as a reminder of their collective suffering, their ancestral home, the continued occupation of the West Bank and the blockaded Gaza by Israel.

Palestinians legally hold the "right of return" to their own lands, which are now considered Israeli territory, according to the UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of 1948.

Millions of Nakba survivors are living with their descendants in refugee camps in blockaded Gaza, occupied West Bank and other neighbouring countries. Others such as Giries ended up across the Atlantic in the US.

Giries says her family first headed to Jordan after their exile, then to Iraq, where they lived for 10 years. 

"We left for Jordan, and in Jordan, my uncle, who was a doctor in an American hospital in Iraq in Baghdad, sent a taxi looking for us, and they found us in As-Salt, a town called As-Salt," she says, referring to an old highway leading from Jordan's capital, Amman, to Jerusalem. 

"So we went to Amman, and a taxi was waiting for us. My father, my mother and my grandmother, my paternal grandmother, the taxi took us to Baghdad. Took two nights on the road, and we stayed there for 10 years."

Her father, John, migrated from Iraq to the US after being sponsored by his brother, a doctor and US citizen.

Her father later opened his business in the US and sponsored the rest of the family in 1958. 

Despite building a successful life in the US, Giries says her longing for Palestine remains undiminished.

"I've been here since 1958, but the longing for the homeland never leaves us. My grandmother died here in the United States. They couldn't be buried next to their husbands in Palestine, and that was a very sad time for them, for all of us," she says.

In 1984, she returned to Ein Karem for a visit. Her family’s house, however, wasn’t there anymore.

"In 1984, my father took me to Palestine, and the first stop was Ainkarim. I remembered so much of this little town where our house stood; it was overgrown with trees," she recounts.

"My house was bombed in 1949, never knew the reason why."

Left temporarily, never returned

Yousef Kassim, a 40-year-old lawyer who lives in the US state of Texas, tells TRT World that in 1948, his then two-year-old father, Yousef Y. Kassim, fled their village of Lifta after Zionist forces launched attacks.

"During the Nakba, Zionist forces came to a coffee shop in Lifta, killed seven people, and terrorised the entire village. There was also fear that women would be attacked. As a result, my father and his family fled," says Kassim.

Lifta is a traditional Palestinian village on the outskirts of Jerusalem in historic Palestine, and Zionist militias displaced all its residents during the Nakba in 1948. Lifta lies slightly over 1 kilometre away from Deir Yassin, where Zionist militias committed the infamous massacre against Palestinians on April 9, 1948.

Like Giries' family, Kassim's family temporarily fled the village, thinking they would return, but they never did.

"My grandparents had built their home just 18 months before the Nakba, putting all their resources into it," Kassim says. 

"My father's family went east a few miles to Al Bireh. My mother's family was from Acre. They fled north to Lebanon, where they stayed until they were able to move to other parts of the world, but they never returned to Palestine."

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A symbol of hope

Kassim's father worked in the Middle East for a year and a half to afford only his airline ticket to the US, and arrived in the country with only $100. 

"My father came to the United States in 1966. His parents could not afford to send him to higher education. He worked in Gulf countries for about a year and a half to afford his airline ticket. He arrived with $100 and came to the US for higher education, eventually graduating from university and becoming a petroleum engineer," Kassim says. 

"He would move back to the UAE for 15 years before returning to the US with my mother in 1984, where they had my siblings and me and raised us in the US."

Kassim adds that his family still keeps some of their belongings that they took during the Nakba — including land deeds for their properties — as "a symbol of hope." 

"We still have copies of all the land deeds for properties owned by my family. We have my grandmother's thobe (traditional dress) hanging in our living room. The key is kept as a symbol of hope, it represents the belief that one day we will return and open the door to our home," says Kassim. 

"My father also collected dirt from Lifta and several other parts of Palestine and mixed it together as another symbol of hope that he still carries to this day." 

His father also kept letters from his parents, which he used to hang on his wall when he lived away as a reminder of where he is from and who he is doing this for.

The Nakba continues

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 531 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed during the Nakba, and 85 percent of historic Palestine's population was displaced by the marauding Jewish militias. 

Brutal Zionists committed dozens of documented massacres against innocent Palestinians, most infamously the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948. 

Other infamous massacres include Lydda, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, and Tantura massacres.

Zionist militias killed approximately 15,000 Palestinians during the Nakba. 

Tragically, this brutal pattern is still being demonstrated by Israel to this very day. 

In recent years, between 2023-25, Israel carried out a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, killing an estimated 72,600 Palestinians, mostly women and children, wounding more than 172,000 others and displacing the enclave's entire population. Analysts say it is an undercount and the actual toll is much higher.

In the same period, Israel killed over 1,155 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, wounded about 11,750 others and abducted nearly 22,000.

For Palestinians, the Nakba never stopped. 

"The Jews will not stop until they have taken that land, all of it, and got rid of all the Palestinians. Look what they have done in Gaza. Look what they keep doing in the (occupied) West Bank: they demolish homes, they kill people, they incarcerate people. It's never going to stop because the whole world is blinded. They see the sufferings of Palestinians, but they don't do anything about it," Giries says. 

"Their aim is to have a greater Israel, which is not only Palestine. It's going to be Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. They want to take all of it… Our Nakba has not stopped, not for one day."

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'Nakba was not a single event in 1948'

Kassim contends that the current plight of Palestinians surpasses the severity of the Nakba, which he says garnered international sympathy.

"The Nakba made the world sympathise with Palestinians, so Israel now tries even harder to eliminate Palestinian existence. What is happening in Gaza is genocide. The Nakba never ended. It is a continuous policy of ‘less Palestinians, more Palestinian land’ — taking land and removing Palestinians one way or another," Kassim says. 

"Israel has never accepted UN resolutions like 242 and 338 that would allow a Palestinian state. Even the International Court of Justice cannot bring Israel to justice."

Echoing a similar sentiment to Giries, Kassim says Israel's goal is "Greater Israel", a Zionist vision that seeks to occupy parts of Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and other countries. 

"In summary, the Nakba was not a single event in 1948. It is ongoing, and the current aggression is a direct continuation of that original violence and dispossession."