Residents of Bil’in marched today after the Friday prayer in a protest joined by international and Israelis activists. Protesters carried Palestinian flags and posters of the martyr, Bassem Abu Rahmah, and also banners commemorating 61 years of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe). A 5 meter long key was carried as a symbol to the right of return which a lot o Palestinians still have keys of their original homes and land ownership documents.
Protesters marched towards the wall calling for the end of the occupation, and to stop construction of the Wall. What the Palestinians are facing by the Israeli occupation did not stop with one Nakba, but the aggression is still continuous especially the most recent offense on Gaza. Settlement building, home demolishing, and the ethic cleansing of the Palestinians in Jerusalem are all Nakbas.
The Israeli army had gathered in big numbers behind cement blocks and used razor wire to prevent the crowd from going through the gate. The army fired tear gas canisters to disturb the crowd, causing dozens to suffer gas inhalation and nine were shot with rubber coated steel bullets. The injured : Auda Aburahma and his brother Ahmad, Jameel Alkhatib and his brother Kamel, Jaber Aburahma, Baseem Yassen, Iyad Burnat, Hamdi Aburahma, and Mohammed Aburahma.
The Nakba Committee of Nablus organized a commemoration ceremony in Balata village. About 500 people from the area gathered to attend the event where various speeches were given by community officials such as the Mayor of Nablus and others.
Some 500 Palestinians with flags and banners gathered in Balata village at the outskirts of Nablus to observe the 61st memorial day of the Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians where expelled from their homeland and became refugees.
The mayor of Nablus, Dr. Jamal Mhezen, held a speech about the Nakba and the political situation today. He pointed out that the Palestinian government did everything Israel was asking for, and rhetorically he asked, ”What did Israel do for the Palestinians?” He talked about the rights of return, and emphasized that Palestinians want peace, but that there are more than one ways to achieve it. He encouraged everyone to continue their struggle for peace in memory of the martyrs.
During the speech of the mayor, a fight broke out between two men. The Palestinian police force attempted to disperse the crowd. Several shocked protesters ran away or became panicked. The situation calmed down shortly thereafter and the ceremony was resumed.
On grounds leased from Balata village for 99 years, the UNWRA established Balata Refugee Camp in 1950 following the establishment of the State of Israel and the ensuing war with the Arab countries. According to Mahmoud Subuh, International Relation at the Yafa Cultural Center, some 800,000 Palestinians had become refugees by 1949. Balata Camp is the largest populated refugee camp in the West Bank. Yet it has the smallest surface area of a mere one square kilometer. It was established for 5,000-6,000 refugees, but today, 25,000 live there. Initially, tents were built as a temporary solution to ease the refugee problem until the conflict would be solved, and the UN Resolution 194 “The Rights of Return” implemented. However, the law of return remained in existance only on paper and was never implemented.
The tents of the first 5,000 refugees remained for about 10 years, however. Then, people were allowed to replace them with small houses, 3x3x2 meters, but only with the permission of the UN. Subsequently, residents were allowed to add more stories as the families grew. There are families of up to 80 people living in a single house. Everyone used communal bathrooms initially, but now they have bathrooms separated by gender.
Since 1970, refugees from Balata Camp were allowed to go into Israel to seek employment, which improved the economic situation somewhat. Yet, the cramped living condition in the Camp is extremely hard to deal with. People are fighting with each over minor things out of frustration. Kids are tough, and are seen as the “Mafia” by the village kids who are going to the same school. They do not have a bright future so the objective of the Yafa Cultural Center is to offer art classes, music, filmmaking and other activities to the youth and women.
Balata Camp is very active politically. During the second intifada, 230 refugees of Balata Camp were killed, and 480 are still in prison today. The root of the economic problems is due to the fact that the refugees at Balata Camp came there with nothing. Most of them came from the Yaffa area. Most people are workers. Before the 2nd intifada, about 60% of the Balata refugees worked in Israel. Now, there is a mere 3% due to restrictive laws for Palestinian workers in Israel, harassment at checkpoints, and the Occupation in general.
Children are suffering extremely under this oppression and economic hardship, not getting healthy nutrition and poor education. About 60% of the kids at Balata Camp are anemic. Some 6,000 kids go to three schools, which means that classes have up to 55 students. Psychological problems are very frequent, i.e. children are wetting their beds, are aggressive, etc. What makes the situation worse, is that recently, the UN cut back on services so that the schools have the worst teachers because they are not paid well and are offered only temporary contracts. In terms of health, there is severe shortage of medicine at local hospitals
According to Mahmoud Subuh, the exodus of Balata refugees such as moving to the village, buying their home and build their existence outside the Camp is not the solution. It would take away their status of refugees and with it, they would lose their rights of return. They would become citizens without a state.
Thousands of Palestinians on Thursday marked the 61st anniversary of the Naqba, the “catastrophe” that sparked an exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees after Israel was created in 1948.
Holding Palestinian flags and photos of Arab villages razed by Israeli forces six decades ago, demonstrators marched in the centre of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“The right of return is sacred”, “No peace without the right of return”, read the banners held by the marchers.
The ceremonies took place a day early because the May 15 anniversary of the Naqba falls this year on a Friday, a day off in the mostly Muslim Palestinian territories.
The demonstration was headed by political figures and religious leaders and began at the tomb of legendary Palestinian chief Yasser Arafat at the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, today run by his successor, president Mahmud Abbas.
In the northern West Bank town of Nablus, about 2,000 people participated in a march, holding Palestinian flags tied with black ribbons as a sign of mourning.
In Aqabet Jaber refugee camp, in the oasis town of Jericho, participants unveiled a statue featuring a six-metre (20-foot) metallic key, symbolising the refugees’ attachment to the houses from which they fled or were forced out in 1948.
Around 700,000 people were exiled in this way in 1948, with the United Nations estimating that today they and their decendants number 4.6 million.
The Israeli army said in a statement that it was sealing off the occupied West Bank from midnight on Thursday until Saturday evening for the Naqba.
Tenweer – Palestinian Cultural Enlightenment Forum and the Women’s Union are working together to organize a campaign to boycott Israel in Nablus high schools.
By showing the movie The Exodus and the Odyssey made by Palestinian refugees Ismail Shammout and Tamam Al Akhal, Tenweer and the Women’s Union are visiting schools in Nablus to raise students’ awareness of the history of Palestine. At the same time they talk to students about how the Palestinian people can non-violently resist the Israeli occupation by boycotting Israeli goods.
They have visited 10 schools so far, and 100-200 students at each school have been able to watch The Exodus and the Odyssey. They will continue to show the film throughout the month of May. The campaign is a part of the commemoration of Al Nakba – 1948, the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their cities and villages, the massacre of civilians, and the razing to the ground of hundreds of Palestinian villages.
Ismail Shammout is a famous Palestinian artist. He was one of the Palestinians who were expelled from their homeland in 1948. The Exodus and the Odyssey tells his story from the Nakba – when he and his family were uprooted from their home in the agricultural town of Lydda, and forced to flee and settle down in a refugee camp in Gaza. The films ends with the second intifada.
Musa says Palestinians feel sorrow for the Holocaust, but question why they are being punished
In a small anonymous home in the West Bank, a Palestinian academic has set up a project which is almost unheard of in the Occupied Territories.
Hassan Musa is the curator of a museum exhibition dedicated to the Jewish Holocaust in Europe.
The cracked white walls of this makeshift museum in the village of Ni’lin are covered from floor to ceiling with images of people forced out of their homes, tortured, imprisoned, starved and murdered.
In addition to the pictures depicting the Nazi brutality against Jews in Europe, there are also images of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the violence in Palestine since.
On one wall, there is a picture of a scared Jewish boy holding up his hands as Nazi soldiers look on; the caption reads: “Make your final account with Hitler and the Nazi Germans, not with the Palestinians.”
On an adjacent wall there are photos of dead children, demolished homes and women screaming during the Israeli war on Gaza in January.
Musa, who is also a member of Ni’lin’s Popular Committee Against the Wall, says pictures of the atrocities committed against both peoples were strategically placed side-by-side to not only reflect the suffering of both and help Israelis and Palestinians better understand each other, but also to demonstrate how victims of one conflict can become the harbinger of another.
“The Palestinians have no connection to the Holocaust in Europe, but unfortunately we are paying the price of a misdeed we did not commit,” he said.
‘Paying’ for the holocaust
Pictures of Jewish victims of the Holocaust are on the museum's walls
In the main room, a large banner sends a direct message to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, a message: “Why should we Palestinians continue to pay for the Holocaust?”
Musa believes this question is the impetus behind the exhibit, hoping it will challenge the international community on what is happening between Israelis and Palestinians.
“The world is shamefully silent about what is happening in Palestine as a way of expressing their sorrow for the death of six million Jews, but in the meantime, they are supporting the state of occupation,” he said.
Ni’lin has become synonymous with violent weekly clashes between Israeli soldiers and activists protesting against the construction of the ‘Separation Wall’.
The current path of the Wall will annex 10,000 acres of Ni’lin land to Israel, leaving its residents with 30,000 acres; this is a fraction of the 228,000 acres that constituted the village in 1948.
Since then, Ni’lin residents have lost more than 85 per cent of their land to confiscation and illegal settlement building.
People in the village also accused the Israeli military of killing four Ni’lin residents since protests against land confiscation began in May 2008.
Among those was Musa’s 10-year-old nephew, Ahmad, who died on July 29, 2008 from a bullet wound to the head; a number of residents and activists have also been injured in the protests.
In March, Tristan Anderson, a 38-year-old American activist acting as an observer with the International Solidarity Movement, was shot in the head with a high-velocity tear gas canister, leaving him in critical condition.
Understanding the occupier
There are also pictures depicting the Nakba in 1948 and the violence since
It is these events that make the location of the museum all the more significant, Musa says.
In a place where Palestinians struggle to fend off occupation, Musa now offers them an opportunity to empathise with and further understand their occupier.
Israeli, Palestinian and international visitors continue to trickle into the museum, though they are fewer in number than the crowds that gather for the protests.
Remaining optimistic, Musa hopes this endeavour will encourage Israelis to pressure their government to halt the occupation.
“Our message to the Jewish people all over the world is that having been victims of such a brutal genocide, we expect you to be messengers of all the principles of justice, mercy and humanity,” he told Al Jazeera.
According to Musa, reaction from Palestinians, especially those in the village, has been positive; the exhibits are, in many instances, the first images they have ever seen of the Holocaust.
Musa says some Palestinian visitors leave the exhibit feeling sorrow for the Jewish people, but also with the same question posed in the messages plastered across the walls: “Why are they punishing us?”
“I lost my nephew and I know how painful it is for me,” Musa says, “that’s why I don’t want anyone else living on this land to lose their loved ones.”
