Tag: Al Nakba - Page 3 - International Solidarity Movement

Right of Return still key – Nakba Day demonstrations violently suppressed by Israeli forces

15th May 2013 | International Solidarity Movement | Ramallah, Occupied Palestine

By Team Ramallah

The 15^th May marks the 65^thanniversary of the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and the destruction – and massacre in some cases – of more than 500 Palestinian villages by Zionist forces in 1948. 65 years on, the same Zionist project of expelling the indigenous population of Palestine continues. House demolitions, land confiscation, settlement expansion, military occupation, restriction of movement and systematic bombing of the Gaza Strip are aimed at ethnically cleansing Palestine for the sake of the Zionist dream: Greater Israel.

Palestinians from different villages and cities across the West Bank, Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and refugee camps in neighbouring Arab countries have commemorated the 65^th anniversary of the Nakba, claiming once again their right of return to their land, their homes and their history.

Protesters standing away from the tar gas (Photo by ISM) — Protesters standing away from the tar gas at Ofer demonstration(Photo by ISM)

In Ramallah, at 11am, more than four hundred people marched from Muqata compound to Yasser Arafat Square waving Palestinian and ‘right of return’ flags. School children chanted slogans against the Israeli occupation and for the right of return of the five million Palestinian refugees around the world.

At around 12.30 am, protesters went to Ofer military prison where clashes erupted between Palestinian activists and Israeli forces. Numerous tear gas canisters and rubber coated steel bullets were shot at demonstrators by Israeli Border Police officers and soldiers. Many people suffered from suffocation as a result of tear gas inhalation and more than twenty people were shot with rubber coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters, at least four of them being taken to hospital by ambulance. Two demonstrators were shot in the head with rubber coated steel bullets and one was shot in the leg with live ammunition. The confrontations finished at around 4pm when protesters gradually retreated from the scene.

In Beit Ummar Palestinian and international activists briefly blocked Highway 60, the main north – south artery for Israeli settlements. The Israeli army responded by throwing stun grenades at the demonstrators. Soon afterwards Palestinian youth clashed with Israeli soldiers in olive groves surrounding the village as the army continued to invade the area. Excessive amounts of rubber coated steel bullets and tear gas were fired at the demonstrators. One was shot in the head and another in the leg and were treated by Palestinian medics on the scene.

65 years after the Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’, the Palestinian people continue to fight for their right to return, whether they are now in the West Bank, Gaza, displaced within Israel or in the refugee Diaspora. The Right of Return for Palestinian refugees is absolutely key in the struggle for Palestinian rights and freedom.

Protesters running away from tear gas (Photo by ISM) — Protesters running away from tear gas at Ofer (Photo by ISM)

Photo essay: March through Nablus and Tulkarem commemorates the Nakba

13th May 2013 | International Solidarity Movement | Nablus and Tulkarem, Occupied Palestine

By Team Nablus

Today, at around 8am, over thirty people from the Palestinian General Union of People with Disability marched through the city of Nablus to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Nakba.

Participants gather in Nablus before the march (Photo by ISM)

People marching along al-Quds Street in Nablus (Photo by ISM)

After the march, a bus drove participants to Tulkarem where they were joined by approximately 40 more demonstrators. Together they continued the march through the city of Tulkarem. They sang and chanted slogans remembering the 1948 massacre and reclaiming the right of return.

Palestinian Scout's band leading the demonstration (Photo by ISM) — Palestinian Scout’s band leading the demonstration (Photo by ISM)

Demonstrators marching through Tulkarem (Photo by ISM) — Participant with sign symbolizing the Palestinians’ right of return (Photo by ISM)

Two young demonstrators participating in the march (Photo by ISM)

The marched finished at the Israeli Chemical factory on the outskirts of the city. Demonstrators hung Palestinian flags and flags calling for the right of return from the wall.

Protesters hang Palestinian flags on the wall (Photo by ISM) — Protesters hang Palestinian flags on the wall of the illegal Israeli chemical factory (Photo by ISM)

Nakba Day: Palestinian group attempts to return to 1948 territories, one arrested

By Ling Lewis

19 May 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

A Palestinian man was arrested at Ni’lin checkpoint on Tuesday, April 15 during a Nakba Day demonstration. The procession successfully crossed the checkpoint which separates the West Bank from Palestinian territories seized in 1948. They were violently forced back by occupation soldiers and police. A Palestinian woman and an international woman were also detained but released that same afternoon.

During the morning rush hour, several dozen Palestinians and solidarity activists took the Israeli army by surprise and walked through Ni’lin checkpoint. The procession stated their intention to return to their homes in the territories occupied by Israel in 1948 and each presented a placard reading, “permission to enter Palestine: inevitable return,” and bearing the names of Palestinian villages depopulated in 1948.

Additional Israeli soldiers and police quickly arrived and began attacking the group, shoving and kicking them backwards. Some soldiers used the body of their M16 rifles to hit the procession. During this time soldiers detained three people. Two women were quickly released, but Nabi Saleh resident Naji al Tamimi remains held by Israeli authorities. Israeli soldiers arbitrarily targeted Tamimi, who was peacefully chanting at the time of his arrest. There is a likelihood he was targeted due to his long history of involvement in the peaceful popular struggle against the Israeli occupation.

The approximately 4 million Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are barred from entering 1948 Palestine, including the holy city of Jerusalem, without rarely-granted permits from Israel. The Ni’lin checkpoint is one of 26 checkpoints which separate the West Bank from the territory which Israel officially considers its own. Of these twenty-six checkpoints, only nine are located on the 1948 “green line”, which is internationally recognized as the basis for the western border of a future Palestinian state. The remaining checkpoints, including the Ni’lin checkpoint, are located at gaps in the Apartheid Wall at places where the wall appropriates Palestinian land. Ni’lin village has achieved international recognition for the tenacity of its nonviolent resistance against the Apartheid Wall in the face of tremendous violence on the part of the Israeli occupation authorities.

The May 15^thdemonstration was called by grassroots organizers to commemorate the 64^th anniversary of the Nakba, or Catastrophe. In 1948, over 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes and villages following the declaration of the state of Israel. The right of return for the current 4.25 million refugees worldwide is an internationally recognized right and one of the demands of the international Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

Ling Lewis is a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

Nakba anniversary message

by Mazin Qumsiyeh

15 May 2012 | Popular Resistance

On this 64^th anniversary of the Nakba we mourn the ethnic cleansing that began in 1948 and that continues today with silent transfer, home demolitions, land confiscation and more. But we also celebrate an amazing resilience and success of the Palestinian endogenous people against incredible odds:

-We just celebrated the success of a hunger strike by over 1600 political prisoners despite attempts to stifle the story in Zionist dominated Western media. They succeeded in achieving a part of their basic rights including receiving family visits and ending solitary confinement.

-We are 11.5 million people and while most of us are refugees and displaced people, we remain steadfast and hopeful and connected. Thanks to persistence and now the internet and modern communications, even the feeble attempts to isolate us from each other failed. Thousands of Palestinians still go to their main city of Jerusalem without Israeli permission. Thousands connect across the Green line to the areas occupied since 1948.

-We are still the most educated people in the Middle East with the highest per capita of postgraduates.

-We now have 12 universities inside the occupied Palestinan territories. On Saturday we held the second biomedical research symposium in Bethlehem showing scientific work rivaling that done in countries with a strong tradition of research. This is miraculous considering the conditions under occupation.

-We are still the people who helped develop the Arab world and even remind it of its unity and common destiny. But more than that, our resistance shielded fellow Arabs from the original plans of Zionists for an empire from the Nile to the Euphrates. We are still the main obstacle to the victory of the racist Zionist project.

-We have an amazing history of 130 years of struggle against the most well-financed, most-organized, most-supported (by Zionists and their Western backers) colonial project in human history.

– We have the fastest growing boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement in anti-colonial struggles. In less than 7 years we accomplished far more than what was accomplished with BDS in any other place (including in 25 years in South Africa).

-Palestine is still the place where people of different religions lived together in the same neighborhod unsegregated until European Zionists came and recreated ghettos for Palestinians (Muslims and Christians) and one large ghetto for Jews called Israel coexist in harmony. Church bells and the call of the Muezzin to prayer still penetrate deep in our souls despite all the Zionist attempts to silence them (e.g. the ethnic cleansing and destruction of 530 villages and towns).

– We educate our children that racism and notions of choseness are wrong and they grow to believe that we can still have the new Palestine that will be like our old Palestine: multiethnic, multireligious, multicultural and beautiful.

– Palestinians inspired activists around the world. Polls show great sympathy for our cause among average people. Palestine is now cause celebre among those struggling against oppression. Even Nelson Mandela said that South Africa will not be fully free until Palestine is free. According to polls, a majority in Western Europe correctly view Israel and the US as the two greatest threats to world peace. Thousands of internationals joined us in the struggle locally. Israel has become so paranoid about any solidarity visits and in the process exposed its apartheid racist nature.

We are grateful to be participants in shaping a better future for all. I am 100% sure that our Nakba will end, refugees will return, freedom and equality will happen, and Israelis will also be liberated from being oppressors and colonizers and become integrated into the fabric of the new and better Palestine. We can then become a “light unto the peoples.”

Palestinian prisoners agree to end hunger strike

by Haitham Hamad

14 May 2012 | Associated Press

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners agreed Monday to end a weekslong hunger strike after winning concessions from Israel to improve their conditions, the two sides announced.

The deal ended a strike in which prisoners had gone without food for up to 77 days, leaving several prisoners in life-threatening condition. It was the longest strike ever staged by Palestinians in Israeli custody.

With the Palestinians set to hold an annual day of mourning on Tuesday, both sides were eager to wrap up a deal to lower tensions. The Palestinians are marking what they call the “nakba,” or “catastrophe,” the term they use in describing the suffering that resulted from Israel’s establishment 64 years ago.

The Palestinian minister for Prisoner Affairs, Issa Qaraqe, said that Palestinian prisoner leaders signed the deal on Monday afternoon at an Israeli prison in Ashkelon. Israel’s Shin Bet security agency and Palestinian militant groups confirmed the deal, which was brokered by Egyptian mediators.

Two men launched the strike on Feb. 27, and were joined by hundreds of others on April 17.

Among their demands: permission to receive family visits from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, an end to solitary confinement and a halt to an Israeli policy of “administrative detention,” under which suspected militants are held for months, and sometimes years, without being charged. Israel has defended the policy as a necessary security measure.

According to a Palestinian negotiator, Israel agreed to allow prisoners from both the West Bank and Gaza to receive family visits. The visits from Gaza were halted in 2006 after Hamas-linked militants in Gaza captured an Israeli soldier. After the soldier was released in a prisoner swap last October, the Palestinians said the ban should be lifted.

He said Israel also agreed to halt its punitive policy of placing prisoners in solitary confinement, would allow prisoners to make phone calls to relatives and permit prisoners to pursue academic studies.

He spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

There was no word on any change to the administrative detentions.

The Shin Bet said in return, the prisoners pledged “to absolutely stop terror activity from inside Israeli jails.” It also said militant group’s commanders outside the jails made a commitment “to prevent terror activity.” It did not elaborate.

Israel said some 1,600 prisoners, or more than a third of the 4,500 Palestinians held by Israel, joined the hunger strike. Palestinians said the number was closer to 2,500.

The fate of the prisoners is an emotional issue in Palestinian society, where nearly everyone has a neighbor or relative who has spent time in an Israeli jail. As the strike dragged on, hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets of the West Bank and Gaza to demonstrate in solidarity.

For families of the prisoners, any deal that did not win their freedom fell short.

“Will they release Bilal? Is it over?” asked Missadeh Diab, the elderly mother of Bilal Diab, one of the prisoners who refused food for 77 days. “May God give your demands and freedom.”