Throughout his life, Ibrahim Hassan Muhammad Abu D’ema often found himself daydreaming, reminiscing about his childhood in Gaza — the picturesque Mediterranean shoreline, the sounds of crashing waves, the sunny streets lined with colorful blooming flowers, and the fresh fish plucked from the sea.

These memories provided some solace for the now seventy-two-year-old as he navigated life in the overcrowded Al-Wehdat refugee camp in Jordan’s capital, Amman. He and his family fled there after Israel took control of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, during the Third Arab-Israeli War in 1967. This marked the start of Israel’s brutal and still-ongoing military occupation of the territories.

Abu D’ema’s family found themselves in Khan Younis, the second-largest city in Gaza, after Zionist militias expelled them from their home in Yaffa, now part of the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, during Israel’s establishment in 1948. This period is known as the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” during which about 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their lands in what became the Israeli state.