The phrase "ongoing Nakba" (Arabic: النکبة المستمرة, romanized: al-nakba al-mustamirra) emerged conceptually in the late 1990s and early 2000 as part of the narrative framework for expressing the "sense of stagnant and suspended historicity" in the Palestinian experience of dispossession over the past century.
[1] Contributing factors to the precipitation of this narrative included the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)'s "shift from anti-colonial resistance to statecraft", as well as the failure of the 1993 Oslo Accords to realize an independent Palestinian state.
[1] The first usage of the term "ongoing Nakba" is typically credited to the Palestinian scholar, activist and politician Hanan Ashrawi in her speech at the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerances.
[1] Elias Khoury reiterated this in a 2012 article in both Arabic and English, presenting the "al-Nakba al-Mustamirra" or "continuous Nakba" as both "a regime of material violence" and "ongoing battle of interpretation, a system aimed at silencing and erasing the Palestinian story by relegating it to the past".
"[8] Researchers at the Australian Institute of International Affairs have called the Nakba "a historical starting point for still ongoing experiences of occupation and exile" and tied the ongoing nature of the Nakba directly to the nature of Israel's ethno-nationalist statehood, noting that "settler colonialism is not an event; it is a structure, which manifests in cycles of violence, displacement, and dispossession of the native local population ... Israel's settler colonial structure is maintained by a continued drive to dominate and – at times – eliminate the native population of Palestine.