Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

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When I first watched the trailer of the prize-winning film All That’s Left of You by the brilliant Palestinian American filmmaker Cherien Dabis, tears streamed down my face and my heart raced. The nearly three-minute video opened the wound of decades of displacement, unending tragedy, and the collective trauma Palestinians have passed down through generations. In the film, Dabis traces the life of a three-generation family from the devastating Nakba in 1948 to the present day, while Israel tightens its grip on the West Bank and completely flattens the Gaza Strip.

But the ongoing catastrophe imposed on Palestinians is neither confined to cinema nor reducible to a time-bound trauma; it challenges the very conventional Western psychological frameworks used to understand suffering under ongoing colonial violence.

Dr. Mohammed Khattab — a firsthand witness — sorrowfully described the Nakba “hell gates” opening on Palestinian life. It marked the root of a broader catastrophe in which over 750,000 Palestinians living in historic Palestine were expelled from their homes to the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, or across the diaspora. More than 500 villages were destroyed, leaving Palestinians homeless on May 15, 1948. Since then, Israel has denied them their right of return.

Khattab, born in 1945 in Beersheba, was displaced during the Nakba to the Gaza Strip. He recalled: “I cannot remember what my life looked like before the Nakba. I can’t remember anything beyond losing my stability. It feels as if my memories only began to bleed the day we were expelled from our home.” He described how, as a 3-year-old child, his mother carried him and his brother in panic, fleeing inevitable death. “Scared and parched, we walked through the night until we reached an area between Al-Maghazi and Al-Bureij refugee camps in Gaza,” he said while sobbing.

“I cannot remember what my life looked like before the Nakba.”

“I cannot remember what my life looked like before the Nakba.”

Living through successive Israeli aggressions — the Nakba, Naksa, the 1956 war, the First and Second Intifadas, the last six wars between 2008 and 2023, and the current ongoing genocide — Khattab said, “This has further deepened the traumatic and unjust memory I have painfully carried.”

When I asked him how he has adapted in order to survive, both as a doctor and a father, he replied, “I have not.” Khattab described the Nakba as a ghost that continues to define his family’s lives, a turning point that shattered what was once whole.

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“I have recounted my experiences to my students and colleagues, and before tucking my children into bed, in an attempt to uplift their morale and affirm that our right of return is not relinquished — sooner or later, it is inevitable.”

He paused, his expression heavy with disbelief: “Little did I know that I was also ingraining their Palestinian identity through trauma.”

The Nakba cracked open a wound that could never truly heal, but instead became inherited as a living legacy across generations.

The Nakba cracked open a wound that could never truly heal, but instead became inherited as a living legacy across........

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