- 'During the first Nakba, our family and relatives were scattered. Today, my children and grandchildren are scattered too,' says mother of 12 children
Palestinian Rahma Abdul Razzaq Hammad, 83, never imagined she would live through the Nakba twice: first as a child, when Israeli forces displaced her from the village of al-Sindiyana near Haifa in 1948, and again 78 years later, when she fled her home in the Jenin refugee camp to avoid an Israeli military offensive.
From a small room in the town of Zababdeh, south-east of Jenin, where she has taken shelter, Hammad recalled two journeys of displacement separated by a lifetime but bound by fear, loss and the scattering of her family.
Hammad told Anadolu, on the 78th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, that her life has felt like “a cycle of repeated displacement.” It began in al-Sindiyana and has not ended, she said, as Palestinian families continue to be displaced from the Jenin refugee camp.
The Israeli army has continued its offensive in the northern West Bank since Jan. 21, 2025, starting in the Jenin refugee camp before expanding to the Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps, destroying hundreds of homes and displacing more than 50,000 Palestinians.
“Nakba,” Arabic for “catastrophe,” is the term Palestinians use for the day Israel was declared on most of their land on May 15, 1948, after Zionist militias committed massacres against them and drove them from their homes.
Palestinians mark the Nakba every year on May 15 with marches, events, and exhibitions in the Palestinian territories and around the world to demand their rights, including the right of return for millions of refugees.
Al-Sindiyana: The start of exile
Hammad said her family comes from al-Sindiyana, a village near Haifa, from which they were displaced during the 1948 Nakba, when she was a child no older than five years old.
She recalled the first displacement, when her family left the village on foot amid fear and chaos, moving between villages and areas until they reached the Jenin refugee camp.
She said her family moved from place to place after the displacement before settling in tents in the Janzour area south of Jenin, while Palestinian families were scattered across different places of refuge.
Decades later, her village remained vivid in her memory. After the 1967 war, she was able to visit it for the first time since her displacement.
“After 1967, we were able to enter and visit the village. When I got out of the car, I picked three leaves from an arum plant off the ground. At that moment, I felt as if I was carrying the whole village in my hands,” she said.
But the visit ended quickly, she said, after an Israeli soldier forced them to leave.
“We told him, ‘This is our village, and we came to see it after many long years,’ but he forced us to throw away the leaves and leave,” she said.
Jenin refugee camp: A temporary substitute homeland
After years of moving, Hammad and her family settled in the Jenin refugee camp, where she built a home and lived near her children and grandchildren. She came to see the camp as a “temporary substitute homeland” after the loss of her original village.
“We worked so hard to build our lives in the camp. We built our homes and lived with our children and grandchildren, and we thought we had finally settled,” she said.
But that stability ended when Israel launched its military operation in the Jenin refugee camp in January 2025, causing widespread displacement and heavy damage to infrastructure and homes, she added.
“We did not expect this to happen to us a second time. We thought the Nakba had ended, but we lived through a new Nakba,” she said.
Hammad described the first days of the military operation as the most difficult, saying families were forced to flee their homes multiple times as shelling, drones, and aircraft sounded overhead.
“We would carry the children while they were asleep and leave the house. Some people slept in cars, and others stayed with relatives,” she said.
“The army, the aircraft, and the gunfire terrified the children. When children hear the sound of shelling, they panic,” she added.
A new Nakba
Hammad now lives alone in a small room in housing allocated for people displaced from the Jenin refugee camp. Her sons and daughters have been scattered across different areas since they were forced to leave.
“I have eight sons and four daughters, and each one lives in a different place, after we had all been together in the camp,” she said.
The family’s current dispersal has brought back memories of the first displacement in 1948, when Palestinian families lost contact with one another during their flight, she said.
“During the first Nakba, our family and relatives were scattered. Today, my children and grandchildren are scattered too,” she lamented.
Hammad said what is happening in the Jenin refugee camp represents an extension of the Palestinian Nakba that has continued for decades.
Residents of the camp spent many years building their lives and stability, only to lose everything within a few months, she said.
“Our last stop was the Jenin refugee camp. We worked so hard to build our lives there,” she said.
Despite her age and the hardship of displacement, she said she still hopes to return to her home in the camp, just as she holds on to her right to return to her original village, al-Sindiyana.
“We want to return to the camp, repair it and rebuild it, and for everyone to return to their families and loved ones,” she said. “The camp is dear to us, but our roots are in al-Sindiyana. We hope God will allow us to return one day to the land of our ancestors."
“We believed our children and grandchildren would not live through what we lived through, but it seems the Nakba is continuing to this day,” Hammad concluded.
The occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has seen an escalation in Israeli military operations, including raids, arrests, shootings and excessive use of force, alongside rising attacks on Palestinians and their property.
Since October 2023, attacks by the Israeli army and occupiers have killed 1,155 Palestinians, wounded about 11,750, and led to the arrest of nearly 22,000, according to official Palestinian figures.
*Writing by Lina Altawell in Istanbul
