Srilanka, May 18 -- As our news feeds overflow with reports of the latest Israeli airstrike or diplomatic manoeuver, it is easy to lose sight of the foundational injustice at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For Palestinians, Nakba Day - marked each year on May 15 - serves as a somber reminder of that original sin: the mass dispossession and displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians in 1948.

This was not a tragic accident of war. It was a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing that gave birth to a state by erasing a people. Entire communities were displaced at gunpoint. Villages were razed. Families fled with little more than the clothes on their backs - never allowed to return.

Today, Gaza is experiencing what many c...