Amir Nizar Zuabi in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. (Photograph, Gali Tibbon)

It was six decades ago, but the fallout from the war continues. A few months ago, one fast-rising, rightwing Israeli party tried to introduce a bill that would ban Palestinians from commemorating the Nakba of 1948, their catastrophe (but which Israelis hail as the creation of their state, the apogee of their independence struggle). In the end, the law will probably be watered down, but the principle seems to have wide support. As far as most Israelis are concerned, they won in 1948, the Palestinians lost, and history has moved on. Except, of course, it hasn't.

Next week, a compelling new play opens at London's Young Vic, promising to thrust the discomforting story of that war back into public scrutiny. At the age of 33, Amir Nizar Zuabi, the play's writer and director, is from a generation of Palestinians raised on stories of the Nakba, haunted by tales of how hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were uprooted from their homes, never to return. "We have it as a covert partner in everything," says Zuabi. "Two of us can sit having coffee and the third person will be Mr Nakba."

Zuabi was brought up in Nazareth, in the Galilee, where there is a large population of Palestinians living within Israel, and where all around there is evidence of the 1948 war, including ruined villages. One of the razed villages was Baissamoon, a tiny Palestinian community. It is here that Zuabi set his play, I Am Yusuf and This Is My Brother, which tells of two brothers, an ill-fated love, and the dislocation and tragedy brought about by the war.

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The play, says Zuabi, began as a personal investigation to scrape away layers of myth. "Why did people make the decision to leave? Or did they make the decision to leave? What would you have done?" Zuabi, living in Israel, found the story had been "hushed up": "It's the big taboo, because it's the primal sin. It is the mother of all problems here. They don't like talking about it."

Zuabi's writing is, however, far from polemical. The Jews who fought to create their state are almost absent; never named, they appear only in the background. "We saw them first in January, then all the time," says one brother. "They invaded our dreams, our conversation." Zuabi simply wanted to tell a Palestinian story about Palestinians. "Our narrative is the less known one - history is written by the victors," he says, but adds: "There is no spite. I find the blame game futile. It's not like I do theatre to crush Israeli propaganda. I don't hear Israeli propaganda. I don't care about it."

To read the full article please visit The Guardian.