The Nakba of Palestine: 74 years of injustice and double standards

The Nakba of Palestine: 74 years of injustice and double standards

Tomorrow, corresponding to the fifteenth of May, marks the 74th anniversary of the Nakba of our Palestinian people, which resulted in the displacement of about 950,000 Palestinians from their original cities and towns, out of 1,400,000 Palestinians who used to live in 1,300 villages and cities .

 The events of the Nakba this year will be organized under the slogan "Enough of 74 years of injustice and double standards", which embodies the double injustice of our Palestinian people, which the Israeli occupation poses in its crimes and the international community´s inability to implement its decisions .

The program of events began with President Mahmoud Abbas´ decision to raise the flag of the State of Palestine over the headquarters of the State of Palestine´s official civil and security governmental institutions and on public facilities on May 15, 2022, in commemoration of the 74th anniversary of the Nakba of our Palestinian people.

 The events will be a mixture of mass activities and artistic and heritage activities, and the march and festival of return will start tomorrow in front of the tomb of the martyr Yasser Arafat to Al-Manara Square in the center of Ramallah, and at 12:20 there will be a minute of silence for 74 seconds representing the years of the Nakba.

 Mourning whistles and takbeers will also sound through mosques, official television and local radio stations, and church bells will ring, in addition to a central festival that will be organized in the Gaza Strip on May 16th .

A photo exhibition will be organized with the participation of 120 Palestinian painters to paint the image of return, in addition to activities, vigils and marches that will be organized at the entrances to the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, and in the camps of the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in addition to vigils organized by Palestinian communities in coordination with the embassies of the State of Palestine, and cultural and artistic events and heritage exhibitions. Within the program to commemorate the Nakba Work is underway with the Palestinian communities in European countries and various countries of the world to commemorate the Nakba, with embassies, and with various believers in the justice of the Palestinian cause .

An electronic campaign was launched on the 13th of this month and will continue until the date of 17/5, to send a message to the world about the continuation of our Nakba and our sacred right to return, which does not fall under the statute of limitations, and the international community´s policy of double standards .

According to the Palestinian Information Center, during the Nakba, the Zionist gangs took control of 774 Palestinian villages and cities, and 531 of them were completely destroyed, and their cultural and historical landmarks were obliterated, and the rest were subjected to the occupation entity and its laws .

The year of the Nakba witnessed more than 70 massacres carried out by Zionist gangs, which Britain provided with weapons and support, such as the massacres of Deir Yassin and Tantoura, and more than 15 thousand martyrs and many battles between the Palestinian resistance and the Arab armies on one side and the Israeli occupation on the other side .

531 towns and villages were destroyed and erased, and Israeli settlements were established on their lands. Large cities were also occupied, and some of them witnessed violent battles and were subjected to occupation bombardment, which resulted in the destruction of large parts of them. Today, some of them have turned into a city inhabited by Israelis only, and others have become mixed cities .

According to the records of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the number of Palestinian refugee camps has reached 58 official camps affiliated with the agency, distributed as 10 camps in Jordan, 9 camps in Syria, 12 camps in Lebanon, 19 camps in the West Bank, and 8 camps in the Gaza Strip .

The occupation, which announced the establishment of its state on this day 72 years ago, controlled 78% of the area of ​​historical Palestine (27,000 square kilometers), with the support of British colonialism in implementation of the alleged Balfour Declaration in 1917 and facilitating the immigration of Jews to Palestine, and the colonial role in making a decision Partition, (United Nations General Assembly Resolution No. 181 of 1947, which the United States of America and France worked on issuing), then came the setback, settlement expansion and displacement, and the occupation controlled more than 85% of the area of ​​Palestine .

The number of Palestinians at the end of 2019, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, was about 13 million, of whom about 5 million live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, (43% of them are refugees according to the general census of population, housing and establishments 2017), and about 1.597 thousand Palestinians live in the occupied territories in 1948, while the number of Palestinians in Arab countries reached about 6 million, and in foreign countries about 727,000 .