The International League of Peoples’ Struggle stands in complete and unconditional solidarity with the Palestinian people in commemorating the genocidal legacy of the Nakba, or “Catastrophe” in Arabic. On this 78th anniversary of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that led to the creation of the Zionist entity of “Israel,” the League joins all freedom-loving and struggling peoples around the world in holding high the Palestinian fight for national liberation as a beacon for our own struggles against imperialism and all of fascism and reaction.
During the Nakba — May 15, 1948 — at least 15,000 Palestinians were killed and 750,000 (two thirds of the population at that point) were displaced from their homes to violently clear the way for Jewish settler colonies to be built. Many of those who were displaced were forced into the enclave of the Gaza Strip, where they and their descendants have lived as refugees ever since. This means that up to 80% of all Palestinians living in Gaza are refugees from the Nakba committed 78 years ago by Zionist death squads.
It is the modern-day death squads of the Zionist occupation military, the descendants of the paramilitaries that carried out the Nakba and drove so many Palestinians into Gaza, that now enacts genocide on the descendants of Nakba survivors. Since 7 October 2023, the Zionists have dropped the equivalent of 13 Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs of munitions onto Gaza. Close to 75,000 have been confirmed martyred, with the actual number likely in the hundreds of thousands. Since the so-called ceasefire, over 700 have been martyred, but this is no doubt also a conservative estimate. The weapons used by the Zionists are almost completely provided for them by the United States, making US imperialism fully complicit in the genocide and ecocide.
77% of the population are still facing acute food insecurity as a result of the Zionists’s ongoing obstruction of food aid to keep the prospect of famine looming over Gaza. Rafah crossing, a key passageway for aid and medical evacuations, has been closed following US-Zionist strikes on Iran. Gas supplies continue to be blocked, forcing Palestinians to use the wood of their destroyed homes.
Palestinian land and property is being razed on the Zionist-controlled side of the “yellow line” in parallel with the establishment of 13 new military outposts and infrastructural connectivity between them. The yellow line serves multiple functions:
- Death-trap and constant source of terror: The line is ambiguously marked, with a shoot-to-kill policy for anyone who crosses it or is near to it.
- A precursory re-drawing of Gaza for full annexation: The line brings 53-58% of Gaza’s territory under Israeli military control, and it is continuously expanding to control more land.
- Making life unliveable: The line consumes an estimated 50-60% of agricultural land, enclosing the boundaries of the concentration camp and severing Palestinians from productive land and resources, thus enhancing the rapidity of starvation and spread of disease.
In the West Bank, Zionist settler mobs and militias, armed with state-funded weapons by the fascist national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have killed close to 1,150 Palestinians since October 2023, tormenting villagers, torching lands, uprooting trees, demolishing homes, bulldozing, and erasing all cultural memory of Palestinians in the area. Over 40,000 have been displaced from Tulkarm, Nur Shams, and Jenin alone for over a year, and the destruction of at least 36,000 olive trees in the past year and a half has devastated the economic livelihood of Palestinian farmers. This continuation of the genocide and ecocide in the West Bank has been paired with a series of policies in the “Israeli” government that aim to make full annexation irreversible.
There are as many as 11,000 Palestinian prisoners in Zionist prisons today, a number that more than doubled after October 2023. Of these, at least 79 are women, and at least 360 are children. Over 20% of Palestinians have seen the inside of a prison cell in their lifetimes, with 99.76% of those having been found guilty in military courts. The recently passed Zionist death penalty law, targeting only Palestinian prisoners, is a new method of state terror aimed at liquidating the historic resistance of Palestinian prisoners and continuing the Nakba behind bars.
The Zionist prison system is now being used also against international solidarity activists, such as those from the Global Sumud Flotilla. Participants in the Flotilla in 2025 and 2026 were attacked, detained, and subjected to torture and medical neglect for days before being sent home by Zionist forces with impunity. This included Flotilla leaders Saif Abukeshek (a Palestinian living in Barcelona), and Thiago Ávila (a Brazilian), who were shown to have had clear signs of torture on their bodies. The two had engaged in a hunger strike with their health rapidly deteriorating by the time international pressure secured their release.
The widespread use of these US-inspired torture methods on international activists is a sign of how strong the global solidarity movement for Palestine has grown since the Nakba 78 years ago. The growth of this solidarity movement is itself a testament to the unbreakable will of the Palestinian people in their fight against the brutally fascist Zionist colonial regime. The Palestinians throughout the entire land of Palestine have asserted their right to self-determination through force of arms and many other tactics of resistance, culminating in the just and righteous Al Aqsa Flood operation against the settler colonial regime on October 7, 2023. The children of the Nakba continue the fight that those who came before them waged, and the struggling people of the world have truly come to see the fight for a free Palestine as fight at the center of the anti-imperialist movement today.
The ILPS stands with the people of Palestine as the fight continues to end the 78-year Nakba enacted by the US-Zionist regime. The League calls on its members to take to the streets in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and demands the release of all political prisoners. This year brings Palestine one year closer to winning its freedom through the justness of armed struggle and the steadfast determination of the united Palestinian people.
From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!
Free All Political Prisoners!
Defeat Zionism!
Down with US imperialism!
Long Live International Solidarity!
Signed,
International League of Peoples’ Struggle
Source : https://peoplesstruggle.org/en/78-years-since-the-nakba-palestine-fights-on/