This year the Nakba will be remembering 60 years of occupation and 60 years of inhumane terror and injustice. Some children will have been born refugees and have now grown old as refugees. This year Israel will be celebrating 60 years of an independent state. 60 years of denying the right of refugees to return, under the UN law. 60 years of contempt. 60 years of pride of their actions

What is the Nakba?

The Nakba, “The Catastrophe” in Arabic, marks the period that Zionist forces spent massacring Palestinians and demolishing their homes to make way for more land in order to establish the exclusively Jewish state of Israel.

What Happened

At  the time Palestinians were mostly scattered peasant farmers with no army and with little need for one. Before the Nakba, Jewish lands only counted for well below 7% of Palestine. After Israel had declared its independence 80% of the Palestinians had lost their homes. Almost 800,000 had been expelled forcibly, or fled, for fear of the mass executions that were being enforced by Zionist forces.

Mr. Fahimi Zeidan, 12,:"The Jews ordered all our family to line up against the wall and they started shooting us. I was hit in the side, but most of us children were saved because we hid behind our parents. The bullets hit my sister Kadri [four] in the head, my sister Sameh [eight] in the cheek, my brother Mohammed [seven] in the chest. But all the others with us against the wall were killed: my father, my mother, my grandfather and grandmother, my uncles and aunts and some of their children."

Ms. Haleem Eid, 30: "A man [shot] a bullet into the neck of my sister Salhiyeh who was nine months pregnant. Then he cut her stomach open with a butcher's knife."

Ms. Naaneh Khalil, 16, saw a man: "take a kind of sword and slash my neighbor Jamil Hish from head to toe then do the same thing on the steps to my house to my cousin Fathi."

Ms. Safiyeh Attiyah, 41: "I screamed but around me other women were being raped too. Some of the men were so anxious to get our earrings they ripped our ears to pull them off faster."

Mr. Mohamed Jaber, student, "The Jews [broke] in, [drove] everybody outside, put them against the wall and shot them. One of the women was carrying a three month old baby."

This particular mass execution was infamously led by the former Israeli President Menachem Begin, as Zionist forces cleared the area for Israeli settlers.

“There was a big British camp in Sarafand. When they withdrew, they left the tanks, cannons and guns for the Jews. We only had old rifles. Some people sold their wives' gold to buy guns to defend themselves. Jews used to live in a high area and they placed cannons to shoot down at us (Gaza, 1st generation, male).”

The Result

The Nakba is the main reason for the current Palestine-Israeli conflict. The extent of the annihilation within the two year period that saw the most killings and the brutal upheaval were the turning tables for the conflict. It resulted in the declaration of the Independence of Israel 14th May 1948.

What It Means

Palestinians will never forget the days that built up to the Nakba, as Israel achieved recognition from the governments of the US and Russia on the blood and land of the Palestinians.

Since then the Palestinian people continue to either live in exile as refugees, denied the inalienable right to return to their homes to live at peace. The few that were allowed to remain, continue to live under the belligerent military occupation of Israel, the occupying power, in the Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, are forced to endure the constant violation of their fundamental human rights. Indeed, with the passage of each year since Al-Nakba and since the occupation of the remainder of historic Palestine forty years ago, the Palestinian people have had to endure ever more loss, both human and material and mounting suffering and hardship.

Nothing has successfully brought an end to this suffering or the fulfillment of the rights of the Palestinian people because of the intransigence of Israel and its total disrespect and contempt for international law, including humanitarian and human rights law. “Instead of complying with the law and pursuing peace, Israel, the occupying power, has acted with flagrant impunity, vehemently denying the rights of the Palestinian people and committing grave breaches, including war crimes, systematic human rights violations and acts of state terror against them. The root of all such illegal Israeli policies and practices against the Palestinian people has been Israel's insatiable desire for expansionism. As such, Israel has undermined or blatantly rejected all peace initiatives and violated all resolutions aimed at achieving a just and peaceful solution to the conflict on the basis of the rules of international law, the resolutions of international legitimacy and the principle of land for peace.” (United Nations, General Security Council)

Join MPACUK, as we commemorate with the rest of the world, the 60th year of The Nakba; what it means for us today, the importance of highlighting the world’s obscene injustices. And the continuous struggle we have ahead of us.

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