“I COULDN’T forget that day, when I was in my home and the Israeli occupation forced me, my neighbourhood and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into homelessness overnight.

“We found ourselves in camps while we had homes in our own villages.

“I kept holding the key to my home, convincing myself that I will be able to go back in a few days time. Those few days have become 72 years.

“Since then my dream has always been to go back to my home. For 72 years I have told the same story to my grandchildren in the hope that one day they could take our right of return.”

This is what my 88-year-old grandmother told me.

This story of my grandmother, and nearly all other grandparents in Palestine, is almost beyond words.

Every Nakba commemoration day, we mark the catastrophe that befell our people in 1948. The memories of what we lost are transmitted from one generation to the next.

When we Palestinians listen to these stories from our grandparents, we feel the passing of time is like an abstract concept compared with our tragic memory. And it strengthened our will to return back to our homes one day.

On 15 May 2020, we still face the forced displacement and the pandemic that hit all the world. We are facing Covid-19 with a fragile and inadequate health system.

At the same time, Palestinians living in Jerusalem and other areas who are served by the Israeli health system, have long been suffering from inequalities in health provision.

These inequities have already worsened chronic diseases, life expectancy, and mortality rates.

It seems like each year adds another catastrophe to our history, and we don’t know until when we are going to suffer.

Lama Mamdouh el Ghazali, 22, is a student living in Gaza.

Lama is part of We Are Not Numbers (wearenotnumbers.org), a collective of young writers from Gaza who put the human stories behind the numbers.