The Palestinian people commemorate today, Sunday the 74th anniversary of the “Nakba,” the bloodiest day and the displacement of the Palestinians from their historical land, in light of the Zionist entity’s continued multifaceted crimes against the Palestinians, to impose the occupation as a fait accompli, while this struggling population adheres more than ever to its national goals and is legitimate rights to return to their homes and establish their independent state.
The fateful “Nakba” day, which falls on May 15 of each year, symbolizes the birth of a Zionist entity in the heart of the Arab and Islamic nation on the land of historic Palestine. On this day in 1948, the Zionist movement seized the majority of Palestinian lands and expelled and displaced nearly 950,000 Palestinians from their lands and distribute them to refugee camps around the world, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
According to the same source, “Zionist criminal gangs” committed during the years 1947 and 1948 more than seventy massacres in the cities and villages of historic Palestine, killing more than 15,000 Palestinians and eliminating hundreds of Palestinian villages and communities from existence, which constituted “the beginning of the tragedy of an entire people,” to be called the Nakba Day.
On the other hand, the occupation opened the door to settlement in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and worked to bring in new settlers from all over the world and sought to Judaize Palestinian lands and holy sites and falsify facts and history at the expense of the original owners of the land.
According to the Palestinian census, the occupying power is currently usurping more than 85 percent of the area of historical Palestine of 27,000 square kilometers, and nearly seven million Zionist occupiers live in it.
However, observers of the Palestinian scene believe that “the Zionist project has not yet been completed in historic Palestine,” because the plan aims to seize the entire area of Palestine and deport all the Palestinian people from their land and property.
Perhaps what confirms this project, is the occupation’s approval, two days before the 74th anniversary of the Nakba, of the decision to establish 4,000 new settlement units in the West Bank, at the expense of 12 Palestinian villages, disregarding the positions of the international community, which unanimously considered settlements “illegal and contrary to the decisions of the International legitimacy”.
In response to this plan, the Palestinian leadership, forces and civil organizations demanded the “immediate intervention” of the United Nations and its relevant institutions to stop this “settlement incursion” and to take measures to prevent the implementation of this project, which falls within the framework of the settlement approach that successive occupation governments have been doing, and which is “considered a blatant violation and disregard for all international calls and appeals calling for a halt to settlements.”
In addition, the memory of the Palestinian Nakba comes in the context of the occupation’s escalation of its crimes against defenseless Palestinians and their sanctities, especially the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, which settlers and occupation forces intensify their storming of its courtyards, to impose temporal and spatial division on the Temple Mount, as well as the high rate of house demolitions and forced evictions of Palestinian homes in favor of Jewish settlers, in addition to the practices of killing, arrest and deportation that amount to “war crimes,” according to many Palestinian forces and international organizations.
The intensification of the Zionist entity’s forces and settlers’ “provocations” and their storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque to celebrate the so-called “Passover” Jewish holiday, which coincided with the month of Ramadan this year, led to the outbreak of a wave of tension accompanied by confrontations that left dozens of wounded and Palestinian detainees.
The repeated incursions into the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque fall within the framework of the plan to change the features of the city of Jerusalem, its historical character and demographic composition to obliterate its Arab and Islamic identity, in order to achieve the project of liquidating the Palestinian cause and existence.
In the context of the open war against everything that is Palestinian, the crime of the occupation’s assassination of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, Al-Jazeera correspondent in the occupied Palestinian territories, deliberately intervened during her coverage of the storming of the Zionist occupation soldiers into Jenin camp in the West Bank, even though she was wearing a press jacket, a crime aimed at “silencing the facts and covering up the Zionist crimes” committed against the Palestinian people, its institutions, and its sanctities.
To confirm their adherence to their legitimate right to their usurped land, which is sanctioned by international legitimacy, the Palestinian people continue their struggle with various available means and methods, including stationing in Al-Aqsa Mosque and standing in the face of repeated incursions into towns, villages and cities, and launching strikes, vigils and hunger strikes.
The Palestinians assert that despite all the years that have passed, they are still armed with their right to return to the motherland, Palestine, which they were forced to leave with a systematic action represented in the massacres, murder, looting and destruction.
