5/14/2024–|Last updated: 5/14/202409:33 PM (Mecca time)
Under the slogan “Your Independence Day, Our Nakba Day,” thousands of 1948 Palestinians participated – today, Tuesday – in a march on the 76th anniversary of the Nakba. They came from several Arab villages within the Green Line to the villages of Al-Kasair and Al-Hawsha, which were destroyed in 1948.
While Israel celebrates May 14 as what is called “Independence Day,” the Palestinians commemorate May 15, the anniversary of the Nakba and the establishment of Israel on their skulls and the ruins of their cities and villages.
The Palestinians of the interior have always commemorated this anniversary every year, and they – who are the children and grandchildren of 160,000 Palestinians who remained in their lands after the establishment of the State of Israel – often repeat, “The day of their independence, the day of our catastrophe.”
Before setting off from the city of Shafa Amr to participate in the march, Abdul Rahman Al-Sabah (86 years old), who was displaced from Al-Kasair, east of the city of Haifa, told the French Press Agency, “I was still 9 years old when we immigrated to Shafa Amr. I used to sneak into our village with my mother.” After the Israeli army occupied it, let us bring mattresses and things from our home.”
But the village’s homes were later destroyed by Haganah forces that occupied the village in April 1948, according to Palestinian accounts and historical documents.
The Haganah is an Israeli military organization that played a major military role in the founding of Israel in 1948, and in doing so committed terrorist acts and war crimes against the Palestinians. A large number of those who later became leaders of the state joined its ranks, and by virtue of its strong training and arming, it formed the first nucleus of the official Israeli army.
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Thousands participate in the annual return march on the anniversary of the Nakba in the occupied interior, under the title: “Our Nakba, not their independence.” pic.twitter.com/IzKdar4XIu
– Palestinian Information Center (@PalinfoAr) May 14, 2024
“Gaza will not kneel”
The Association for Defending the Rights of Displaced Persons in Israel, with the support and participation of the Higher Follow-up Committee for the Arab Public, called for what was called the “Twenty-Seventh March of Return,” which toured the villages of the Haifa District. It is a march that has been repeated since 1997 annually on the anniversary of the Nakba.
The march also carried the slogan that has become known among Palestinians at home and abroad: “We will remain as long as thyme and olives remain.”
The ongoing aggression against the Gaza Strip dominated the slogans of this year’s march. Participants in the march chanted, “Gaza will not kneel to tanks and cannons,” “Freedom is freedom, our Gaza is freedom,” and “No to starvation, no to demolition, no to displacement.”
A large banner carried by the demonstrators read in Arabic, English and Hebrew: “Stop the war now.”
The Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip has been continuing for more than 7 months, and has so far left more than 35,000 martyrs, tens of thousands wounded, and massive destruction in the Strip.
Under the title “Nakba Marches”… a massive demonstration in the streets of the Canadian city of Montreal on the 76th anniversary of the occupation of the Palestinian territories. pic.twitter.com/LIUn2ngYuL
– Tel Aviv Tribune Egypt (@AJA_Egypt) May 14, 2024
Palestinian scarf
Young men and women wrapped themselves in Palestinian keffiyehs and carried Palestinian flags and small banners bearing the names of villages from which they were displaced, and whose people live in other Arab villages and cities inside Israel after their original villages were demolished during the war.
The villages of Al-Kasair and Al-Hosha fell on April 14, 1948, before the establishment of Israel was announced on May 14, 1948, and today there are kibbutzims Osha, Ramat Yohanan, and Kfar Hamkabi on their lands.
Abdul Rahman says, his eyes filled with tears, as he holds a picture of his father and mother, “The Israeli army blew up our village and the village of Al-Hawsha so that we would not return to them and planted mines, but for a long time we kept coming here, me, my mother, and groups from the village, because it was the harvest season and we wanted to live.” And to eat. My father was a prisoner with the Israelis at the time.”
He recounted that during one of these “secret” visits, “a mine exploded while one of the children was trying to pick a pomegranate.”
He pointed out that he was arrested when he was young. And that all his uncles immigrated to Lebanon. “Only my father stayed here, and we stayed with him.”
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations issued a decision to end the British mandate over Palestine and divide its lands into 3 new entities: an Arab state, a Jewish state, and for Jerusalem and Bethlehem to be under international guardianship.
Activist Musa Al-Saghir (75 years old) in the Association for the Defense of Displaced Persons, an association concerned with Arab citizens who were displaced from their Arab villages that were demolished or prevented from returning to them, said, “After the attack on our village of Al-Hawsha and its fall, my father took my mother and rode a horse and headed to the city of Shefa Amr. When they returned to the village, Haganah forces had blown up the village and its homes.”
Women activist Naila Awad (50 years old), who comes from the village of Al-Rina near Nazareth, said, “These marches are to confirm the demand for the return of the displaced to their destroyed villages inside the country and the return of refugees from the diaspora.”
She added that the marches are “a clear sound of anger to tell them that no matter how much you try to break us and arrest us, we will remain on our lands and we will be a thorn in your side.”
The number of Arabs in 1948 is estimated at 1,400,000, and they constitute 17.5% of the population of Israel. They constantly complain of racism, hatred, and discrimination, and the resulting deprivation of their basic rights and services that Jews receive.