Arab Israelis mark 62nd year since 'Nakba' saw 750,000 Palestinians dispossessed

By The Daily Star and Agence France Presse (AFP)

Wednesday, April 21, 2010


Arab Israelis mark 62nd year since 'Nakba' saw 750,000 Palestinians dispossessed

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Thousands of Israel’s Arab citizens marked the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” that accompanied Israel’s creation, when some 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Protesters carrying Palestinian flags and signs with the names of destroyed Arab villages marched to the site of the village of Maskah, emptied in 1948, to demand the “right of return” for those exiled following Israel’s birth. Other demonstrations took place across Israel and the occupied territories.

“People live just a few hundred meters away from the home they were uprooted from, and the pain has not eased up to this day,” said chairman of the Arab Higher Monitoring Committee, Mohammad Zeidan.

Zeidan noted that the number of people taking part in the Nakba Day march increases from year to year. “All the racist laws against the Arab public in Israel just strengthen and unify it,” he said.

Today more than 4.7 million UN-registered refugees live in camps in the Occupied Territories, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, and their fate is one of the thorniest issues in the decades-old Middle East conflict.

Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=114024#ixzz0lhEFhsL5
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)