Jabalia, Gaza – Inside his partially destroyed home in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, 85-year-old Abdel Mahdi al-Wuheidi sits beside a small fire brewing coffee, staring at what remains of a life, now surrounded by rubble.Next to him sits his wife, Aziza, also in her 80s, whom he married six decades ago. Despite years of trying, the couple was never able to have children.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listToday, they live together with the five sons of Abdel Mahdi’s late brother. They were children when their father died, and Abdel Mahdi raised them and helped them to marry and start families of their own.Born in 1940, Abdel Mahdi was only a child when the 1948 Nakba – the mass expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their home at the founding of the state of Israel – unfolded. And yet, despite living through that pain and trauma, he says that what Palestinians are enduring today, brought on by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, surpasses anything he has ever witnessed.“We are from Bir al-Saba [Beersheba] … that was our homeland,” he says in a tired voice. Bir al-Saba is the largest city in the Naqab Desert. It was captured by Israeli forces in 1948, forcing much of its Palestinian population out. Abdel Mahdi al-Wuheidi and his wife Aziza [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]The original NakbaAbdel M …
