Palestinians Demonstrate in Gaza to Mark Nakba Day
People in the Gaza Strip, a besieged Palestinian enclave, have staged a mass rally in commemoration of Nakba Day, which marks the 1948 mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes.
Thousands took part in a rally in Gaza City on Sunday, demanding the return of Palestinians to their homelands. Israelis forces them out in 1948 after occupying their towns and cities in a war with Arabs.
The rally, organized by various political factions, saw demonstrators marching from the Unknown Soldier Square to the office of the United Nations in Gaza. Waving Palestinian flags, they chanted “We will return.”
“Sixty-eight years have passed since the Nakba and our people have never forgotten their homeland, Palestine,” said a demonstrator, adding, “Let the whole world know that our people will never accept an alternative to this homeland.”
The protesters also called for stronger unity among Palestinian factions and groups, including those in Gaza and in the occupied West Bank, in the face of Israel’s tactics for continuing the occupation.
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, which rules Gaza, also issued a statement Saturday, calling for national unity on the occasion of Nakba.
Chairman of Hamas’ political bureau, Khaled Mishaal, said in the statement that “the rights of return, freedom of prisoners, statehood, and self-determination are inalienable Palestinian rights.”
Protests and marches were also held across the occupied West Bank, including in the cities of Ramallah, al-Khalil and Bethlehem while rights activists around the world were expected to observe the official commemoration.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) says some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their lands in 1948 and were scattered across refugee camps in the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. The number of refugees today is well above five million.
UN must pressure Israel on Palestinians right to return – PLO
On the other hand, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has called on the UN to implement a resolution adopted in 1948 giving Palestinian refugees the right to return to the occupied territories as they are gearing up to commemorate the 68th anniversary of Nakba Day (the Day of Catastrophe).
PLO’s legislative body, the Palestinian National Council (PNC), said in a statement released on Saturday that all refugees must be entitled to the right to come back to their homes as stipulated in the General Assembly Resolution 194, emphasizing that the right is non-negotiable and can never be compromised.
It also censured the crimes and atrocities perpetrated by the Tel Aviv regime against Palestinians, making reference to the extra-judicial killings and torture of Palestinian prisoners as Israel’s consistent hegemonic policy.
Every year on May 15, Palestinians all over the world hold demonstrations to commemorate Nakba Day, which marks the anniversary of the forcible eviction of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland by Israelis in 1948.
More than 760,000 Palestinians – now estimated to number nearly five million with their descendants – were driven out of their homes on May 14, 1948.
On Saturday, hundreds of Palestinians staged a “March of Return” in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa toward the site of a Palestinian village, which Israeli military forces razed in 1948.
Arab members of the Israeli Knesset (parliament), activists and local Palestinians made their way to the village of al-Tira, where dozens of Palestinians were slaughtered by Israeli troopers and a large number of houses completely destroyed. Only a few buildings remain in the area, which are either vacant or occupied by illegal Israeli settlers.
Since 1948, the Israeli regime has denied Palestinian refugees the right to return, despite United Nations resolutions and international law that uphold their right to return to their homelands.
Israeli Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev has said that all cultural and sports facilities across the occupied lands, including Arabic institutions, must raise the Israeli flag on Nakba Day.
The Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Regev had instructed the ministry’s Director General Yossi Sharabi to develop an initiative aimed at the action. Her proposal needs to be debated and approved by the Knesset.
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