On May 15, Palestinians will mark 78 years since the Nakba, the forced displacement by the Israeli army that reshaped their history and scattered families across borders for generations. For decades, the Nakba lived in stories told by grandparents: villages left behind, a memory of simple lives built on land and seasons, and survival through hardship.
Today in Gaza, those stories are no longer just memories. They are instructions.
Across the devastated strip, where homes lie in ruins and basic services have collapsed due to the Israeli war on Gaza, families are rediscovering ways of living that echo the past methods of those who survived the original displacement in 1948. For many, survival now depends not on modern systems but on inherited knowledge passed down through generations.
For Khalil Salem, the connection between past and present is unmistakable. Now 85, he was only eight when he was displaced from his village of Huj during the Nakba. “Life was simple,” he told The National. “We depended on agriculture. Everything was done over fire.”
There were no refrigerators, no electricity, no gas, only seasonal rhythms and careful preparation. Families stored food not as a choice but as a necessity. Tomatoes were dried or preserved as paste. Fruit was turned into jam. Supplies were managed with the understanding that scarcity was inevitable.
Decades later, Mr Salem finds himself returning to those same methods, not out of tradition but out of need. “Today feels very much like yesterday,” he said.
After the destruction brought by Israel in Gaza, and the severe shortages of food, water and electricity, his family began storing what little they could again. During the famine of 2025, it was jars of jam, prepared in advance, that helped keep children from malnutrition.
Memory becomes lifeline
For Wedad Abu Hani, 89, the return to the past is just as stark. Originally from the town of Ashdod, she now lives in a tent in Al Mawasi, southern Gaza, with her extended family. “We used to rely on fire for everything,” she recalled. “Cooking, baking, heating.”
As life became modernised, those practices faded. Gas replaced fire. Appliances replaced manual work. But the war reversed that progress. “When gas stopped entering Gaza, we had no choice,” she said. “We went back to fire.”
What she learnt as a child, watching her mother light and manage flames, became essential once again. Now, she teaches her children and grandchildren how to cook over an open fire, how to manage heat and how to adapt.
The knowledge is not just practical, it is generational,” Ms Abu Hani said. “I teach them everything because life depends on it.
“I thought cooking over fire was something from the past and would remain there. But as Palestinians, the past is still part of our lives. We cannot forget it. We have to honour those methods that helped us survive.”
Beyond food and cooking, even shelter is being reimagined through the lens of the past.
In Gaza city, Ayman Abu Youssef, 52, stands beside what remains of his destroyed home. After months in tents, he made a decision: to rebuild, not with modern materials, which are scarce and expensive, but with methods his father remembered from before the Nakba.
“My father lived through that time,” he says. “He told me how they used to build with mud and stones.”
At first, the idea seemed like a backward step. But with cement unavailable and building materials nearly nonexistent, it became the only viable option. Using stones reclaimed from rubble and red clay, he built two small rooms and a bathroom. “It’s not as good as cement,” he admitted. “But it’s better than living in tents.”
Similar scenes are unfolding across Gaza. Families are digging basic sanitation pits, rebuilding walls from debris and relying on techniques that predate modern infrastructure. In many ways, daily life now mirrors the conditions of early displacement – improvised, fragile and deeply rooted in necessity.
The shift is not just physical, it is psychological. For older generations, it is a return. For younger ones, it is a lesson.
“The life we lived after the Nakba taught us many things,” Ms Abu Hani said. “Now we are using them again.”
Yet even as these methods offer resilience, they also underscore a painful reality: after 78 years, the trajectory of Palestinian life in Gaza has, in some ways, come full circle. The dream of return remains. But for now, survival takes precedence.
In Gaza today, the Nakba is not only commemorated: it is relived, reshaped by war, and carried forward in the daily acts of cooking over fire, storing food for uncertain days and building homes from earth.
What was once history has become present and for those living it, the past is no longer distant – it is the only guide they have left.
“It is our fate to live an unstable life and our duty is to keep going, to learn from our grandparents and to pass that knowledge on to our grandchildren,” Ms Abu Hani added.
