We won't stop protesting Britain's role in the ongoing Nakba

“Now that we’re witnessing this evolution of the Nakba from elimination by exclusion, deportation, ethnic cleansing, separation, into elimination through genocide, it’s almost that we’re reliving that Nakba and that what we feel is happening now is a continuum that started in 1948.”

Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah said this in a video of his ‘Nakba story’, the story of how his family’s experience of the Nakba of 1948 shaped his life and continues to shape the life of his children.

When Palestinians speak about the ‘ongoing Nakba’, this is what they mean, and anyone who knows the history of Palestine would have thought about the photos we’ve all seen from 1948 when watching the scenes from Gaza of thousands of people fleeing however they could, with whatever they could carry with them, to wherever they could go, even knowing that there was no safety at all in the Gaza Strip.

Not one centimetre of safety was left in what was once upon a time the beautiful, vibrant Gaza Strip with its active ports, busy beaches, cities and villages, markets filled with locally grown fruits, schools and universities filled with enthusiastic and intelligent young people with a passion for study, hospitals filled with exceptionally gifted doctors and nurses, cultural centres and theatres, high-rise skyscrapers in some places and old traditional stone homes in others.

Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip barely spared any of this. In a way, it could seem trivial to weep over lost marketplaces when faced with the unspeakable weight of the death toll: over 70,000 Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023, over 20,000 of them children. But part of honouring the memory of those killed is also honouring the memory of the lives they lived and would have continued to live, if not for Israel’s relentless brutality.

In fact, this is also the story of the Nakba of 1948, or rather, the lesson we take from how Palestinians have remembered it. They remember the brutal violence, the destruction, the complete social and political upheaval, but they also remember the villages as they were, the cities and towns and the neighbourhoods that were then replaced. They name their children after their towns of origin as both a memory and a conviction to return.

In Britain, the Nakba has a particular meaning too. It was set in place by decades of British colonial rule in Palestine, which prepared the ground for the next phase of colonisation, Israel’s ongoing settler-colonial project. And of course, British complicity in the dispossession and mass murder of Palestinians is also not only a story of the past—it is still the reality today.

The British government continues its support for Israel through the arms trade, through the import of produce grown on land stolen from Palestinians, and a constant flow of material support for and incentivisation of Israel’s apartheid control.

As broad grassroots opposition to British complicity in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians has grown over the past few years, the British government’s anxious attempts to quash it have become even more draconian than even the most jaded campaigners could have ever imagined.

From the proscription of the direct action group Palestine Action to the crackdowns on our huge national marches for Palestine, the British state has left virtually no leaf unturned in its attempts to scare and punish people for standing up for what’s right, for opposing British complicity in genocide.

In just the past month, we’ve seen the British government railroad through a new law that will give police unprecedented power to restrict protests based on ‘cumulative impact’, something that the UN Special Rapporteur called a “vague concept” that “grants law enforcement excessive discretionary powers to restrict assemblies, disregarding the standard that peaceful protests inherently entail a level of disruption that must be accommodated.”

The London Metropolitan police and government officials, as high-ranking as the Prime Minister, defame our peaceful marches and call on them to be restricted, with the absolute gall to suggest that there is something hateful or dangerous about calling for an end to genocide.

This is all whilst giving space for the far-right so-called Tommy Robinson and his racist followers to march in the centre of London.

And the Kafkaesque news this week is that activists trying to stop British arms from being produced and shipped to genocidal Israel will be sentenced as terrorists, even though they did not face those charges when convicted.

Make no mistake—these tales of repression are all a part of the same story, of a strategy and a campaign by the British government to shut down opposition to its harmful policy of support for Israel’s genocide, and to give concessions to the most extreme far-right figures in the meantime.

Imagine how different this story could be if the British government used even a fraction of the resources it’s using in this campaign of repression, instead of its actual legal and moral responsibility to punish and prevent acts of genocide?

We don’t put much hope in our ability to change the hearts and minds of those currently in the seat of power, and if recent local election results tell us much, it’s that voters are looking for a change that doesn’t rely on hope in Starmer’s Labour. The leading Party lost almost 1500 council seats, with many disgruntled voters raising their failure to end complicity in the genocide in Gaza and take on the far-right on issues like immigration.

But we also have many reasons to be optimistic about the growing power of the movement in solidarity with Palestine.

More than 2200 candidates in the recent elections signed a pledge for Palestine.

In the lead-up to the Eurovision Song Contest that is also taking place this week, people around the world have been mobilising a boycott over Israel’s involvement in the competition, with over 18,000 people having signed a petition against it. Not only did Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and Iceland withdraw from the contest, but during the semi-finals, which were broadcast on Tuesday, viewership dropped sharply.

Palestine solidarity activists and climate campaigners also disrupted Barclays’ AGM in London last week to protest the bank’s financial links to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza as well as its fossil fuel financing. The bank has over £2 billion in shares of eight of the nine companies whose weapons, components, and military technology have been used in Israel’s unlawful violence against Palestinians. Barclays also provides over £6.1 billion in loans and underwriting to seven of these companies.

And when government officials took to the airwaves last weekend to call for restrictions on our marches, we saw that people weren’t having it. The Jewish Bloc rejected the weaponisation of the tragic event to ban Palestine solidarity protests.  And we saw the number of coaches being organised to bring people to London for our march this weekend steadily increase, despite every attempt to scare, smear, and confuse people into not showing up.

Throughout this genocide, the escalating occupation and apartheid, amidst refugee camps in Lebanon at risk of Israel’s bombing…and from the Nakba of 1948, Palestinians mourn those killed and what has been lost, but they also hold on to their memory as a conviction for the future, what they will repair and rebuild, and when they will return. And they do it with dignity and perseverance.

Our solidarity with the Palestinian people is a moral duty, but it’s also an honour. This Saturday, we will march to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the Nakba to reaffirm our commitment to the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including the refugees’ right to return home.

Ryvka Barnard is the Deputy Director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign UK.

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