The unforgotten "Nakba": facts about Palestine

photo by palestinalibre.org on Flickr.

The world has watched today's events and until now there are 15 killed in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. The Nakba or "catastrophe" isn't only 63 years old, efforts have been made years before 1948 to prepare for Jewish migration and to get them into Palestine. After Palestine was placed under British mandate, efforts have been conducted to facilitate placing around 3-4 million Jewish amongst Arabs in Palestine, expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes. The first Israeli PM Davin Ben-Gorion once said: "the old will die and the young will forget" referring to the Palestinian refugees. Surprisingly to the Israelis, they haven't forgotten.

Many villages inside the borders of Israel were ethnically cleansed to allow for colonial settlements and to establish the new state of Israel, around 95% of the newly established state of Israel were built between 1948-1953 on the land of the expelled Palestinians. Today, there are around 4.7 million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and elsewhere; some of them are still living in refugee camps under inhuman conditions. The fate of these refugees is still unknown.

Today, the 15th of May is the 63rd anniversary of the "Nakba", Palestinians and Arabs took to the streets marking this day, which lead to clashes were the Israeli army has shot the protesters killing around 15 till the moment.
 
The Lebanese army has tried to prohibit the protesters at the borders from evoking clashes with the Israelis on the other side of the border. Meanwhile, the Egyptian Army has blocked the roads to the Gaza border city of Rafah and detained around 10 activists, The Israeli Defense Force has though condemned that the Syrian and Lebanese Armies have done nothing to prevent violence at the borders.

The protests outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo turned violent after the  police forces cracked down on protesters injuring tens and detaining some of them.

• Most Muslims and Arabs are against the "Zionist project" but not Judaism as a religion. Arabs see Zionism as a racist movement that uses religion to uproot the Palestinians and force them out of their homes to seize the land and build Israel.
• Israel had denied residency rights to 140,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, in what Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz described as a "demographic policy" whose "sole purpose is to thin out the Palestinian population". 
• The international community recognizes the West Bank and Gaza Strip as the "Occupied Palestinian Territories".
• Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 but the United Nations Security Council resolution 478 declared it "null and void" and a violation to the international law.