The war did not begin on October 7, 2023, no matter how loudly that date is repeated to erase the long history of occupation and conflict that came before it. October 7 is used as a licence to forget, a convenient starting line that allows seventy-five years of dispossession, occupation, siege and repeated military assaults to be reduced to historical ash.

But the testimonies of the oppressed do not work that way. Wars do not begin when the powerful decide to start counting; they begin when people are uprooted from their land, dignity, safety and any right to futurity, and Gaza's story begins in 1948, not in 2023.

In 1948, during what Palestinians call Al-Nakba, or 'The Catastrophe', the creation of the State of Israel came with the forced displacement of at least 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral land. Entire villages were cleared, homes demolished or seized, and families sent into exile under the illusion that it was only for a short time.

It was not. Those refugees were never allowed to return, and Gaza became one of the places where their descendants were compressed into a narrow strip of land where loss was perpetuated, not remembered. When Gaza is bombed today, it is not just a city under fire; it is a refugee camp built on an unresolved crime.

In 1967, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip following the Six-Day War, placing its population under military rule and control. From that moment forward, Gaza's residents did not control their borders, their airspace, or their freedom of movement. Daily life was regulated by an occupying power that could decide who........

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