World explained: How this year's Nakba Day will inevitably be more emotive than ever before

Nakba Day will be marked this year for the 76th year since Palestinians were displaced to form the state of Israel

Next Wednesday, Palestinians will mark the 76th Nakba Day: an annual remembrance of the displacement linked to the foundation of Israel in 1948.

More than 750,000 Palestinians from a 1.9 million population became refugees after Israel took control of 78 per cent of what had previously been Palestine. The remaining 22 per cent was split into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians live today.

Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, is commemorated with protests around the world in support of the Palestinian community.

An elderly Palestinian woman lifts a national flag during a rally marking Nakba day in the Ramallah city centre in the occupied West Bank last year.

This year’s Nakba, however, is likely to be particularly emotive, coming as thousands of Palestinians – the majority of them already displaced from their homes by the Israeli attacks – attempt to evacuate the city of Rafah in Gaza ahead of an impending ground operation. The international community has warned any such move could be catastrophic in a city where two thirds of the 2.2 million-strong Gazan population is currently living, forced out of other areas of the territory which have already been decimated by air strikes in retaliation for the 7 October Hamas attacks.

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Silent vigils are planned for Edinburgh and Glasgow on Tuesday, the day before Nakba, organised by the Scottish Palestinian Forum.

However, experts have warned of potential bloody clashes in the Middle East, where the largest rallies already typically occur in Palestinian communities in neighbouring countries such as Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Meanwhile, university campuses in the US – as well as closer to home in Edinburgh and Aberdeen – are already at the centre of a pro-Palestinian movement, clashing with authorities over protests and occupations against the war in Gaza.

Some US universities have cancelled graduation ceremonies – most notably that at Columbia, which had its main commencement celebration scheduled for Nakba Day itself. The student protests have spread from the US to the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Attempts by universities to stem protests have just fuelled the fire: students are refusing to give in, taking more and more extreme steps to have their voices heard. In Scotland, a group of students from Edinburgh University Justice for Palestine Society holding a vigil outside of Old College have been on hunger strike this week. Others are occupying a building in George Square.

Some have already described the situation in Gaza right now as another “nakba”. People are starving; aid trucks are unable to reach those in need; people are sleeping on the streets and others are being killed as their homes are bombed while they sleep. Gazan communities have been devastated. Even if and when a ceasefire is eventually agreed, many of the territory’s towns and cities where people lived, worked and studied before the current conflict essentially no longer exist.

Whatever your political views, it is undoubtedly a disaster for the people of Gaza, plain and simple. And, like many Palestinians whose ancestors were displaced in 1948, the descendants of this generation of Palestinians in Gaza will still be feeling the effects, decades later.