NAKBA DAY, May 15th 2011
EDITOR: 63 years to the Nakba, and it is still continuing
After more than six decades, the UN resolutions of 1947 and 1949/50 are just the useless paper they were at the time. Israel did now allow the creation of the Arab state in Palestine, has expelled most of the Palestinians from their home and land, and refused to let them back into their country. Following the UN resolution 194, calling for all refugees to be allowed back into their homes, Israel has destroyed more than 500 towns and villages, razing them to the ground, and making a return (Awda) impossible. Not only the houses and villages were destroyed, but even the ground cover was replaced with European fir trees, to remove all signs of the indigenous population and its habitation in Palestine.
Today, hundreds of Nakba events are taking place across Palestine, and many hundreds have already been arrested as these lines are written. Since 2010, the commemoration of the Nakba is illegal in Israel. History is illegal; memory is illegal; reality is illegal, in the state which breaks every law in the book. Until now, Israel has already murdered 12 Palestinian protesters in the Syrian Golan Heights alone, today.
Israel is illegal. It laws are a travesty. They will not defeat memory and history.
Israeli forces open fire at Palestinian protesters: BBC
Israeli forces have fired on groups of protesters at borders with the Palestinian territories, Syria and Lebanon.
Reports say that at least 12 people have died and dozens more have been injured.
In one incident, thousands of Palestinian supporters from Syria entered the Golan Heights, Israel says.
Palestinians are marking the Nakba or Catastrophe, their term for the founding of the Israeli state in 1948.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced out of their homes in fighting after its creation.
Responding in a televised address to Sunday’s violence, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped “calm and quiet will quickly return, but let nobody be mistaken, we are determined to defend our borders and sovereignty”.
Impetus
Clashes have been taking place at four separate borders or crossing points – at Erez in Gaza, near Ramallah in the West Bank, on the Golan Heights and at the border with Lebanon.
The BBC’s Jon Donnison, in the West Bank town of Ramallah, said this year’s Nakba protests have been given impetus by the uprisings in countries across the Middle East and North Africa.
Our correspondent, at the Qalandiya checkpoint there, says there is a stand-off now, but dozens of Palestinians have been injured.
Palestinian protesters have been throwing stones at Israeli security forces, who have been firing tear gas and rubber bullets.
On the occupied Golan Heights, the Israeli military said it had only fired warning shots as a large number of protesters tried to breach a border fence near the village of Majdal Shams.
But reports said at least two people had been killed and dozens injured.
Israel’s army says this is a “serious” incursion. Brig Gen Yoav Mordechai said soldiers were still trying to control the crowds and that dozens of protesters had crossed.
The army has reportedly sealed off Majdal Shams and is carrying out house-to-house searches for “infiltrators”.
Israel seized the strategic territory from Syria in the closing stages of the 1967 Six-Day War.
On the Lebanon-Israel border, a large number of protesters also approached the crossing with Israel.
Dozens of buses had brought protesters to the area under the rally slogan of “March for the return to Palestine”.
Lebanese soldiers had fired in the air to try to disperse the protesters, who were chanting: “By our soul, our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for you, Palestine.”
Gen Mordechai says Israeli troops fired as demonstrators began vandalising the fence.
Lebanese military officials say 10 people have been killed and scores wounded.
“We are seeing here an Iranian provocation, on both the Syrian and the Lebanese frontiers, to try to exploit the Nakba day commemorations,” Gen Mordechai said.
A spokesman for the UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon called on both sides there to show restraint.
Syria denounced Israeli actions in the Golan Heights and Lebanon as “criminal”, Agence France-Presse news agency reported.
“Israel will have to bear full responsibility for its actions,” the foreign ministry said.
However, one Israeli official told AFP: “Syria is a police state. Demonstrators do not randomly approach the border without the prior approval of the central government.”
On the Israel-Gaza frontier, at the Erez border crossing, Israeli troops opened fire with tanks and machine guns, injuring dozens, Palestinian medical officials said.
Meanwhile in Tel Aviv, Israeli police are investigating whether an Arab-Israeli lorry driver deliberately ploughed into pedestrians, killing one Israeli man.
Eight killed as Israeli troops open fire on Nakba Day border protests: The Guardian
Many more wounded in clashes at Israel’s borders with Syria, Gaza and Lebanon, as UN appeals for ‘maximum restraint’
A Palestinian woman and child are helped to safety during Nakba Day violence north of Jerusalem. Photograph: Jim Hollander/EPA
Israeli troops opened fire on pro-Palestinian demonstrators attempting to breach its borders on three fronts, killing at least eight people. Scores more were wounded at Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza.
Clashes also erupted in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as Palestinians commemorated Nakba Day, the anniversary marking the 1948 war in which hundreds of thousands of people became refugees after being forced out of their homes.
Thousands of Palestinian refugees in Syria marched towards the village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967. At least four people were killed by Israeli troops as they crossed the border, Israel Radio reported. Up to 20 were injured, according to the Israeli Magen David Adom ambulance service.
A statement from the Israeli military said: “Thousands of Syrian civilians breached the Israel-Syria border near the Israeli village of Majdal Shams.
“IDF forces opened fire in order to prevent the violent rioters from illegally infiltrating Israeli territory. A number of rioters have infiltrated and are violently rioting in the village. From initial reports there are dozens of injured that are receiving medical care in a nearby hospital.”
Most of the inhabitants of Majdal Shams, a large village close to the border, hold Syrian citizenship and have family on the other side of the border, from whom they are cut off. The Israeli army declared the area, which is heavily mined, a closed military zone on Sunday.
Despite being occupied by Israel for 44 years, the Golan is usually calm. Syria has repeatedly demanded Israel hand back the area.
A similar Nakba Day protest on the Lebanon border led to four people being killed and around 15 wounded, according to Lebanese media reports. Dozens of protesters approached the border from the Lebanese town of Maroun a-Ras.
Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, an Israeli military spokesman, said soldiers fired when demonstrators began vandalising the border fence. The army was “aware” of casualties on the other side, he said.
Witnesses said that Israeli troops had fired across the border at protesters throwing stones from within Lebanon, a move that could have serious repercussions and prompt further cross-border incidents.
UN peacekeepers on the Lebanese side of the border appealed for “maximum restraint” to prevent casualties.
In Gaza, around 60 people were injured by shelling and machine-gun fire when protesters approached the heavily fortified Erez border crossing, according to Palestinian medical sources. Israelis living near Gaza were advised to stay inside bomb shelters.
The Israeli security forces were braced for wide-scale protests on Nakba Day – the most highly charged day in the Palestinian calendar – and had deployed around 10,000 troops and police along the country’s borders and in the Palestinian territories. The West Bank was subject to a 24-hour closure, with only emergency access permitted.
The Israeli authorities warned that the first Nakba Day following uprisings across the region could herald riots across the Palestinian territories.
In the West Bank, rubber bullets were fired at about 200 Palestinians and supporters who marched towards the Qalandia crossing on the edge of Jerusalem.
There was also unrest in East Jerusalem, fuelled by the death of a 17-year-old Palestinian boy who was shot in the stomach during clashes on Friday. He died in hospital on Saturday.
In Tel Aviv, an Israeli man was killed and 17 injured when a truck ran into vehicles and pedestrians. It was not clear whether the incident was an accident or a deliberate attack. The truck’s 22-year-old Israeli-Arab driver said he lost control of the vehicle due to faulty brakes.
EDITOR: The language of resporting the events is more revealing than the report itself…
In this Haaretz report, the Palestinians who crossed what most reports called the ‘border’ between Israel and Syria (It is no such thing – it is a ceasefire line, as both sides are on Syrian territory) were called ‘infiltrators’. This is an interesting term to use, especially on Nakba day; Israel’s regime and media has used this term for decades, when describing Palestinians returning to their land after 1948 under cover of darkness. Normally they were shot on the spot, like today. People returning to their country are ‘infiltrators’ and those who took their land and killed them are the ‘law’.
Last infiltrators return to Syria after day of bloody clashes on northern borders: Haaretz
IDF sources say Lebanese demonstrators were killed by gunfire from the Lebanese army during Nakba Day protests on the border; Syria foreign ministry condemns Israel.
The last of the protesters who infiltrated across the border into Israel from Syria on Sunday have been returned to Syria by Israel Defense Forces soldiers and Israel police.
At least one demonstrator was killed and around 40 more wounded in the incident near Majdal Shams on the Syrian border, according to the IDF.
The IDF said that the incident clearly bore Iran’s fingerprints and served Syrian interests.
According to Lebanese security sources, at least 10 Palestinian protesters were killed at a demonstration near the Lebanese-Israeli border.
The sources said more than 100 people had been wounded in the shooting incident in the border village of Maroun a-Ras.
The protests were held to mark Nakba Day, which mourns the creation of the State of Israel.
Syria condemned Israel’s “criminal activities” on Sunday.
State news agency SANA quoted the Syrian foreign ministry as saying it called on the international community to hold Israel responsible for the incidents, the deadliest such confrontation along the borders in years.
The IDF had no prior information of the intention of demonstrators to break through the border fence. IDF forces had been deployed at several points along the Syrian and Lebanese borders but there was no expectation that violence would break out in the Majdal Shams area, where numerous demonstrations have occurred in the past that all ended without violence.
Hundreds of demonstrators tried to break through the border fence in the Maroun a-Ras area of Lebanon. IDF and Lebanese forces opened fire to prevent to prevent demonstrators from crossing the border.
According to IDF sources, IDF soldiers fired shots in the air and at the legs of protesters while Lebanese forces opened fire indiscriminately.
The IDF sources said that three to five demonstrators were killed by Lebanese gunfire.
10 IDF soldiers and three IDF officers were injured in the incidents on the Syrian and Lebanese borders.
Palestinians killed in ‘Nakba’ clashes: Al Jazeera English
Several killed and scores wounded in Gaza, Golan Heights, Ras Maroun and West Bank, as Palestinians mark Nakba Day.
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Several people have been killed and scores of others wounded in the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, Ras Maroun in Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as Palestinians mark the “Nakba”, or day of “catastrophe”.
The “Nakba” is how Palestinians refer to the 1948 founding of the state of Israel, when an estimated 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled following Israel’s declaration of statehood.
At least one Palestinian was killed and up to 80 others wounded in northern Gaza as Israeli troops opened fire on a march of at least 1,000 people heading towards the Erez crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel.
A group of Palestinians, including children, marching to mark the “Nakba” were shot by the Israeli army after crossing a Hamas checkpoint and entering what Israel calls a “buffer zone” – an empty area between checkpoints where Israeli soldiers generally shoot trespassers, Al Jazeera’s Nicole Johnston reported from Gaza City on Sunday.
“We are just hearing that one person has been killed and about 80 people have been injured,” Johnston said.
“There are about 500-600 Palestinian youth gathered at the Erez border crossing point. They don’t usually march as far as the border. There has been intermittent gunfire from the Israeli side for the last couple of hours.
“Hamas has asked us to leave; they are trying to move people away from the Israeli border. They say seeing so many people at the border indicates a shift in politics in the area.”
Separately in south Tel Aviv, one Israeli man was killed and 17 were injured when a 22-year-old Arab Israeli driver drove his truck into a number of vehicles on one of the city’s main roads.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the driver, from an Arab village called Kfar Qasim in the West Bank, was arrested at the scene and is being questioned.
“Based on the destruction and the damage at the scene, we have reason to believe that it was carried out deliberately,” Rosenfeld said. But he said he did not believe the motive was directly linked to the anniversary of the Nakba.
West Bank clashes
One of the biggest Nakba demonstrations was held near Qalandiya refugee camp and checkpoint, the main secured entry point into the West Bank from Israel, where about 100 protesters marched, Al Jazeera’s Nisreen El-Shamayleh reported from Ramallah.
Some injuries were reported from tear gas canisters fired at protesters there, El-Shamayleh said.
Small clashes were reported throughout various neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem and cities in the West Bank, between stone-throwing Palestinians and Israeli security forces.
Israeli police said 20 arrests were made in the East Jerusalem area of Issawiyah for throwing stones and petrol bombs at Israeli border police officers.
About 70 arrests have been made in East Jerusalem throughout the Nakba protests that began on Friday, two days ahead of the May 15 anniversary, police spokesman Rosenfeld said.
Tensions had risen a day earlier after a 17-year-old Palestinian boy died of a gunshot wound suffered amid clashes on Friday in Silwan, another East Jerusalem neighbourhood.
Police said the source of the gunfire was unclear and that police were investigating, while local sources told Al Jazeera that the teen was shot in random firing of live ammunition by guards of Jewish settlers living in nearby Beit Yonatan.
‘Palestinians killed’
Meanwhile, Syrian state television reported that Israeli forces killed four Syrian citizens who had been taking part in an anti-Israeli rally on the Syrian side of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights border on Sunday.
Israeli army radio said earlier that dozens were wounded when Palestinian refugees from the Syrian side of the Golan Heights border were shot for trying to break through the frontier fence. There was no comment on reports of the injured.
There have also been reports that Israeli gunfire killed up to 10 people and injured scores more in the Lebanese town of Ras Maroun, on the southern border with Israel.
Matthew Cassel, a journalist in the town, told Al Jazeera that he saw at least two dead Palestinian refugees.
“Tens of thousands of refugees marched to the border fence to demand their right to return where they were met by Israeli soldiers,” he said.
“Many were killed. I don’t know how many but I saw with my own eyes a number of unconscious and injured, and at least two dead.
“Now the Lebanese army has moved in, people are running back up the mountain to get away from the army.”
‘End to Zionist project’
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the events of “Nakba Day” in a televised statement on Sunday, particualrly referring to attempts to infiltrate Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, saying “we are determined to defend our borders”.
Netanyahu said that he instructed Israeli forces to act with restraint, but to stop all attempts at infiltration and challenges to Israel’s sovereignty.
He said that the “Nakba Day” protesters were not fighting for the 1967 borders as they claim, but were denying Israel’s right to exist.
“We must understand who and what we are up against,” Netanyahu said.
Earlier on Sunday Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of Hamas-controlled Gaza, repeated the group’s call for the end of the state of Israel.
Addressing Muslim worshippers in Gaza City on Sunday, Haniyeh said Palestinians marked this year’s “Nakba” “with great hope of bringing to an end the Zionist project in Palestine”.
“To achieve our goals in the liberation of our occupied land, we should have one leadership,” Haniyeh
said, praising the recent unity deal with its rival, Fatah, the political organisation which controls the West Bank under Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’ leadership.
Meanwhile, a 63 second-long siren rang midday in commemoration of the Nakba’s 63rd anniversary.
Over 760,000 Palestinians – estimated today to number 4.7 million with their descendants – fled or were driven out of their homes in the conflict that followed Israel’s creation.
Many took refuge in neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere. Some continue to live in refugee camps.
About 160,000 Palestinians stayed behind in what is now Israeli territory and are known as Arab Israelis. They now total around 1.3 million, or some 20 percent of Israel’s population.
Clashes erupt as Nakba Day protests sweep Palestinian territories: Haaretz
At least 45 youths hurt by IDF fire along Gaza fence; in West Bank, troops attempt to disperse protesters; firebomb hurled at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem.
There were widespread protests throughout the Palestinian territories on Sunday, as fears that the annual Nakba Day commemorations would spiral into violence seemed to be realized as reports emerged of repeated clashes and arrests. Nakba Day is a Palestinian day to mourn the creation of the State of Israel.
Israel fired two tank shells and several rounds from machine guns as dozens of Palestinian protesters approached the heavily fortified border in the Gaza Strip over the course of the day, wounding at least 45 people, a Palestinian health official said.
On Sunday afternoon, IDF forces fired on a suspect planting an explosive device along the border in the northern Gaza Strip. A hit was identified, the IDF said.
Across the West Bank, thousands of Palestinians took to the streets, waving flags and holding old keys to symbolize their dreams of reclaiming property they lost when Israel was created on May 15, 1948.
In a West Bank refugee camp and on the outskirts of Jerusalem, IDF troops fired tear gas to break up large crowds of stone throwers.
Demonstrators gathered at a gas station near the village of Isawiyah in East Jerusalem early Sunday, hurling rocks at the security forces. One police officer was injured and at least 13 protesters were arrested during those clashes, some of them with the aid of a helicopter team.
Palestinians demonstrating near Mount Scopus in Jerusalem hurled firebombs at the back of the Hadassah University Hospital. No one was wounded in the incident and there were no reports of damage.
In the West Bank city of Qalandiya, between Jerusalem and Ramallah, some 200 protesters began marching toward a local checkpoint. Police attempted to disperse those protesters by firing tear gas canisters. 20 protesters were lightly hurt.
Other protesters gathered near the Gush Etzion settlement bloc in the West Bank; Palestinian security forces arrested some rioters, but left other demonstrations to continue unhindered.
Israel had instituted a 24-hour closure on the West Bank and deployed thousands of security forces across the West Bank to stave off potential violence on Nakba Day. Even so, officials had said they expected calm to prevail.
Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch arrived at the Western Wall and said that security forces are mobilized to the maximum in light of the events. “The police are on high alert, so the day can pass quietly,” Aharonovitch said.
Aharonovitch stated that until now there have not been any incidents that were out of the ordinary and estimated that “the situation is under control, but we must keep in mind that everything could change.”
Also Sunday, a resident of the Arab village of Kafr Qasem in northern Israel plowed a truck into vehicles and pedestrians on a busy Tel Aviv road at the tail end of rush hour. One man was killed and at least 16 others were wounded.
Refugees march to return: The Electronic Intifada
Matthew Cassel, 13 May 2011
A Palestinian refugee and Nakba survivor in Lebanon’s Ein al-Helwe refugee camp. (Matthew Cassel / JustImage)
Long before Muhammad Bouazizi there was Muhammad al-Dura. The horrific footage of the 12-year-old Palestinian boy gunned down by Israeli soldiers while seeking refuge alongside his father in September 2000 was one of the sparks that made protests spread across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The second intifada, like the first intifada (1987-1993) before it, was a popular grassroots uprising against Israeli occupation. It was these intifadas that have made the Arabic word for uprising largely synonymous with the Palestinian liberation struggle — and made the word universally understood all over the world.
Since the wave of recent Arab uprisings began in Tunisia late last year after the self-immolation by Bouazizi, many have asked when the Palestinians will follow suit and lead a revolt of their own.
In the decade after the second intifada began, Palestinians have faced violent Israeli repression — thousands were killed and injured, and tens of thousands have been detained and imprisoned. Entire cities, villages and refugee camps have been subject to invasion and curfew, often for weeks at a time. And in recent years, the Palestinian Authority has become a repressive force of its own, forcefully quelling protests in the occupied territories and working in open coordination with the Israeli army.
Despite this, the spirit of the Palestinian liberation movement has continued unabated. Protests by Palestinians inside the occupied territories, Israel and the diaspora are commonplace, particularly the ongoing weekly protests in West Bank villages like Bilin and Nilin that have gone on for years.
Solidarity with Palestine in the Arab world has always existed. Not only did Arabs protest in support of Palestinians early in the intifada, but more recently, during Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza in the winter of 2008-09, hundreds of thousands protested across the Arab world, from Yemen to Morocco, against the attack that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, the overwhelming majority civilians.
However, Arab despots, many of whom have become the target of popular protests calling for their ouster, have often either suppressed or co-opted protests in solidarity with Palestine. During the various uprisings and protests in the Arab world, other than the flag of the respective nations being waved, the Palestinian flag has also been present in almost every country, a symbol of just how important Palestine and the intifada are in the greater Arab world.
Now, inspired by the recent Arab revolts, Palestinians are planning for their own uprising in a day activists are calling the “third intifada.” What initially started as a call for a protest on Facebook has transformed into a grassroots movement led by Palestinians around the world.
On Sunday, 15 May, Palestinian activists, political factions and non-governmental organizations, are participating in various coordinated actions to protest Israeli occupation and call for the right of return for some six million Palestinian refugees. The significance of this date is that it is Nakba day — the day Palestinians annually commemorate their ethnic cleansing from Palestine as British forces departed in 1948 and Zionist forces took over much of the country to establish Israel.
Protests are planned in Ramallah, Gaza City, Amman, Damascus, Cairo and other cities. Egyptian activists are also planning to go to Gaza and challenge their government’s complicity with Israel in the siege of the territory. Here in Lebanon, organizers are calling for an unprecedented “Right of Return” march to the border that they were forced to cross 63 years ago this week.
Unlike Tunisians, Egyptians and other peoples in revolt, Palestinian refugees don’t have the luxury of living under only one oppressor. In Lebanon, for example, hundreds of thousands of refugees live with few civil rights; many are restricted to refugee camps enclosed by the Lebanese army.
In recent years, activists have waged a campaign demanding civil rights in Lebanon in order to return home to Palestine. In the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, after it was destroyed in 2007, Palestinians had to first demand a return to the camp where they had sought refuge six decades ago before demanding a return home to Palestine. Conditions in Syria and Jordan also restrict refugees’ freedoms and deny them many political rights. While most Palestinian refugees declare only one goal — to return to Palestine — they also admit that getting there is a long and circuitous path.
Sharif Bibi, a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon and one of the organizers of the 15 May Right of Return March, told me, “Palestinians have always dreamed of an Arab revolt since they believe that Palestine won’t be liberated until the Arab world is liberated. The fall of Mubarak in Egypt gave hope to people and made the idea that ‘we can do it’ into something real.”
Bibi says there are already more than 500 buses planned to transport an estimated 35,000 persons — mostly Palestinian refugees — from across Lebanon to the village of Maroun al-Ras on the boundary with Israel. Very few mainstream Lebanese political groups are endorsing the march, except for Hizballah, the Shia Islamic resistance movement celebrated for liberating southern Lebanon from 22 years of Israeli occupation in 2000.
It was soon after that liberation that hundreds of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon traveled to the boundary. Many greeted family members whom they had been separated from for decades or never met before, on the other side of the fence in Israel. Also around this time is when a now-famous photograph of the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said throwing a stone across the border emerged.
According to Bibi, the march this weekend will have a different purpose. Located hundreds of meters away from the border fence, Sunday’s demonstration aims to show that Palestinian refugees have not given up on their inalienable right to return home.
Given their history, it’s easy for one to assume that Palestinians will play a central role in any larger uprising in the Arab world. After this weekend, that role should be clear.
Matthew Cassel, a former editor of The Electronic Intifada, is a journalist and photographer based in the Middle East. His website is justimage.org. Follow him on twitter (@justimage) for live coverage of Sunday’s march in Lebanon.