Al-Haram: The Palestinian Village Erased During the 1948 Nakba

Have you ever heard the term Nakba?

Let me show you what it looks like from here, occupied Palestine.

What I'm standing on right now is not a neutral land.

This city did not grow naturally.

I'm standing in a place that had a name long before Israel was created, Al-Haram, also

known as Sayyidna Ali.

A Palestinian village that once overlooked the Mediterranean just north of occupied Jaffa.

This wasn't empty land.

It was alive.

Palestinian families lived here.

They farmed citrus, bananas, and olives.

They fished these waters.

People also came to visit the shrine of Sayyidna Ali, built in 1081.

Nearly a thousand years ago.

And then in April 1948, during the Zionist campaign to seize Palestinian land, this village,

Al-Haram, was emptied.

Not abandoned, emptied.

This was ethnic cleansing, organized, intentional, and foundational to the creation of Israel.

The people were expelled.

The place was silenced.

Look down at these Palestinian graves.

They didn't disappear.

They couldn't leave.

But today inside Israel, these Palestinian graves are treated as open scenery.

This mosque, which called Sayyidna Ali, still stands.

It survived not because Israel protected it.

It survived because stone is harder to erase than people.

When Israel was established, Al-Haram village was erased from the map.

Its name burned and its land absorbed into what Israel now markets as part of Herzliya.

Same land, new identity.

So if you've never heard of Al-Haram, it wasn't an accident.

Erasure is part of the Israeli colonial plan.

But places remember even when states lie.