Yara Hawari and Itxaso Domínguez de Olazábal will be discussing the fragmentation of Palestinian society, its resistance and the role played by the international community, along with other issues, in Madrid. You can watch the debate on YouTube: https://youtu.be/dqui0DOOvL4 The month of May marks a significant turning point in Middle East history. On May 15, 1948, 74 years ago, the State of Israel declared independence over more than 80% of the historical area of Palestine. Approximately 800,000 Palestinians were expelled in the process, as over 400 Palestinian towns and cities were destroyed. This trauma is now known as the Nakba (catastrophe in Arabic), but Palestinians also talk about al-Nakba al-mustamirrah, the “Ongoing Nakba”: beyond just a historical event, it is a continual process of plundering and ethnic cleansing. Palestinians, numbering some 14 million worldwide, continue to live in a situation dominated by colonialism and apartheid, where they are denied both their past and future, while their present seems to condemn them to perpetual waiting. Understanding the current reality of the Palestinian people requires a nuanced viewpoint which takes into consideration both its historical and critical dimensions, while able to connect recent events with the historical context. At this round table, Yara Hawari and Itxaso Domínguez de Olazábal will address the fragmentation of Palestinian society, its resistance, the role played by the international community and the importance of shared transnational struggles, all from different perspectives. The event will also include the presentation of the book Palestina: Ocupación, colonización, segregación (Palestine: Occupation, colonization, segregation) written by Domínguez de Olazábal and published by Catarata. The event will be moderated by Karim Hauser, Casa Árabe’s International Relations Coordinator. Yara Hawari is a senior analyst for Al-Shabaka: The Palestine Policy Network. She completed her PhD in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter in 2017, where she taught several undergraduate courses and remains an honorary research fellow. In addition to her work in academia, which focused on indigenous studies and oral history, she is a regular political commentator who writes for several media outlets, including The Guardian, Foreign Policy and Al Jazeera English. She is the host of the podcast Rethinking Palestine, and in December of 2021, she had her first novel published, The Stone House. Itxaso Domínguez de Olazábal coordinates the Middle East and North Africa Panel at Fundación Alternativas and is an associate professor of International Studies at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. In addition to other projects, she has worked as a researcher at the London office of The U.S./Middle East Project, as well as at the European Parliament and the European Union Delegation in Egypt. She contributes to several media outlets, including Público and El Periódico. She holds a PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and is a researcher at the Workshop for International Mediterranean Studies (TEIM), at the same university. Further information: https://en.casaarabe.es/event/nakba-74-an-ongoing-catastrophe