Survivor testimony quoted exactly as published, each with a link to the oral-history archive that recorded it.https://falasteen.ai/enFree to read, quote and cite with attribution to FALASTEEN.AI.https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/abdel-mahdi-al-wuheidi-bir-al-saba/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/abdel-mahdi-al-wuheidi-bir-al-saba/Driven from Bir al-Saba as a child in 1948 and from Jabalia camp in 2023, he returned after the October 2025 ceasefire to a house standing in rubble.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/abdullah-nashwan-al-dawayima/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/abdullah-nashwan-al-dawayima/Eleven years old when his family fled the massacre at al-Dawayima in October 1948; displaced again in 1967, he has lived in Jordan's Baqa'a camp since.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/abed-abdi-haifa/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/abed-abdi-haifa/A six-year-old expelled from Haifa in April 1948 recalls the crowds fleeing to the port; he returned with his family three years later and became a renowned visual artist.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/ahmad-abughoush-imwas/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/ahmad-abughoush-imwas/Expelled from Imwas at fourteen during the 1967 war, he describes his family's flight on foot to Ramallah before Israeli bulldozers razed the village and Canada Park was planted over its ruins.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/ahmad-al-haj-al-sawafir/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/ahmad-al-haj-al-sawafir/A survivor from al-Sawafir al-Sharqiyya in the Gaza district, fifteen in 1948, describes the burning of his village and a warplane attack during the family's flight.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/abu-arab-saffuriyya/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/abu-arab-saffuriyya/Thirteen years old when Saffuriyya was attacked in July 1948, he describes the air raid that emptied the village during the Ramadan iftar.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/daiffallah-abu-al-gussain-al-shalalah/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/daiffallah-abu-al-gussain-al-shalalah/A Gaza elder born before the state of Israel, he fled his village in the Beer al-Sabe area at the age of seven and still keeps the 1938 deed proving his family's land, to pass to his grandson.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/dalal-nassar-julis/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/dalal-nassar-julis/An 84-year-old refugee from Julis recalls walking to Gaza as a girl during the 1948 exodus and the humiliation of the first years in tents at Deir al-Balah.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/fahimi-zeidan-deir-yassin/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/fahimi-zeidan-deir-yassin/A twelve-year-old survivor of the 9 April 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin describes the killing of her family, in a statement recorded by British police officers days after the attack.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/ghada-karmi-jerusalem/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/ghada-karmi-jerusalem/A Jerusalem childhood ended in April 1948: days after Deir Yassin, nine-year-old Ghada Karmi's family packed a few summer clothes and left their Qatamon home, believing they would be back within weeks.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/ibrahim-abu-lughod-jaffa/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/ibrahim-abu-lughod-jaffa/A nineteen-year-old Jaffa high-school student, he sat his matriculation exams in March 1948 under nightly mortar bombardment — 'Daily we knew people who got killed. We buried them.' — and weeks later fled the falling city by sea.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/ismail-shammout-lydda/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/ismail-shammout-lydda/Expelled from Lydda at eighteen during the July 1948 "death march," he recalls an Israeli soldier stopping him at gunpoint from filling a pot with water as thousands trudged toward Ramallah in the heat.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/jaber-shaban-simsim/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/jaber-shaban-simsim/A survivor from Simsim, northeast of Gaza, describes the May 1948 attack that drove his family out of the village when he was ten years old.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/leila-giries-ayn-karim/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/leila-giries-ayn-karim/Eight years old when her family fled Ayn Karim on the western edge of Jerusalem in 1948; the family moved to the United States in 1958, and she now lives in a suburb of Los Angeles with the key to the house framed on her wall.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/michael-kardoush-nazareth/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/michael-kardoush-nazareth/He left Nazareth in 1954 rather than live under the military government imposed on Palestinian citizens of Israel, walking 18 kilometres across the border to Lebanon.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/mohammed-abu-seif-julis/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/mohammed-abu-seif-julis/A 91-year-old survivor from Julis, in the Gaza district, recalls his family's expulsion in 1948 and a lifetime in the refugee camps of Bureij and Nuseirat.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/muhammad-abu-hana-al-tantura/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/muhammad-abu-hana-al-tantura/A twelve-year-old during the assault on al-Tantura in May 1948 describes the roundup on the beach that preceded the killing of scores of the village's men.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/mutlaq-abu-elkhair-barqa/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/mutlaq-abu-elkhair-barqa/A 96-year-old survivor from Barqa, depopulated in May 1948, recalls walking down the coast into Gaza with his family, expecting to be home again within days.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/omar-abedelal-burayr/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/omar-abedelal-burayr/A nine-year-old when Burayr was besieged and depopulated in 1948, he recalls the farmland his family had worked for generations and the return they never stopped expecting.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/ouda-abu-haddaf-naqab/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/ouda-abu-haddaf-naqab/A Bedouin survivor from the Naqab, born in 1936, describes the 1948 attack on his village and the chain of displacements that ended in the refugee camps of Gaza.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/reja-e-busailah-lydda/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/reja-e-busailah-lydda/A visually impaired teenager during the July 1948 expulsion from Lydda, he recalls being herded east on foot in the exodus that became known as the Lydda death march.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/salman-abu-sitta-main/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/salman-abu-sitta-main/Salman Abu Sitta, expelled from Ma'in near Beersheba at the age of ten, speaks to Al Jazeera about the Nakba and his life's work mapping the destroyed villages of Palestine.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/salwa-naser-jaffa/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/salwa-naser-jaffa/Six years old when her family left Jaffa by boat in 1948, and a refugee for the second time in 2012 when the war in Syria destroyed her home in Damascus.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/umm-omar-jusayr/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/umm-omar-jusayr/Eight years old when her family was expelled from Jusayr in 1948; she has lived in Jabaliya refugee camp ever since.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/wajiha-al-harsh-jaffa/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/wajiha-al-harsh-jaffa/An 80-year-old refugee from Jaffa, living in the Jabaliya camp's 'Jaffa neighborhood' in Gaza, recalls the panic of the May 1948 flight from her city.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/yacoub-odeh-lifta/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/yacoub-odeh-lifta/An eight-year-old when Lifta was emptied in early 1948, he recalls fleeing with nothing but the clothes his family wore, certain they would be back the next day.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMThttps://falasteen.ai/testimonies/zakaria-elnatour-al-sumayriyya/https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/zakaria-elnatour-al-sumayriyya/A refugee from al-Sumayriyya, between Acre and Nahariya, describes the 1948 capture of his village and his family's flight to Lebanon and Syria, in a letter to a Jewish student.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:09:00 GMT