Global Arab Network | Fatah accuses Hamas, Palestinians mark the 'Nakba'

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Fatah accuses Hamas, Palestinians mark the 'Nakba'

Thousands of Palestinians have marked the 61st anniversary of the "Nakba" in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced following the creation of Israel. Demonstrators marched through cities across the West Bank on Thursday, holding Palestinian flags and images of Arab villages razed by Israeli forces in 1948.

The ceremonies took place a day early because the May 15 anniversary of the Nakba falls this year on a Friday, a day off in the mostly Muslim Palestinian territories.

In Ramallah, demonstrators waved banners reading, "The right of return is sacred," and "Return, Jerusalem And Self-Determination: Our Struggle Will Continue" as they gathered at the tomb of Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian leader.

Meanwhile in the northern West Bank town of Ramallah, about 2,000 Palestinians held a separate rally, marching through the streets with black ribbons to signify mourning.

"Sixty-one years have passed since the Naqba (but) the images of uprooting, exodus, death, imprisonment and attempts to obliterate our identity and existence remain fresh," Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said in a television address.

"The independent Palestinian state will dawn and the day will come when not a single refugee is languishing in exile and not a single prisoner is in the jails of the (Israeli) occupation," he said.

In Aqabet Jaber refugee camp, in the oasis town of Jericho, participants unveiled a statue featuring a six-metre (20-foot) metallic key, symbolising the refugees' attachment to the houses from which they fled or were forced out in 1948.

Around 700,000 people were exiled in this way in 1948, with the United Nations estimating that today they and their decendants number 4.6 million.

Fatah accuses Hamas of trying to block Nakba

A Fatah spokesman on Thursday accused the Islamic Hamas movement of trying to prevent supporters of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement from marking the annual anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas authorities summoned a Fatah district leader in northern Gaza "to put pressure on Fatah not to participate in the Nakba's rally," said Fehmi al-Za'arier, a Fatah spokesman based in the West Bank.

The deposed government of Gaza, run by Hamas movement, authorized the committee to organize activities for the Nakba but kept the ban on all other activities that Fatah may try to hold, according to the spokesman.

The Islamists and their secular rivals have been at loggerheads since June 2007, when Hamas forced pro-Abbas forces out of Gaza, splitting the Palestinian territories into two entities.

This year's Naqba fell during the first official visit to the region by Pope Benedict XVI, who during a visit to the West Bank on Thursday expressed deep sympathy with the refugees.

"In these days ... (the longing for peace) takes on a particular poignancy as you recall the events of May 1948 and the years of conflict, as yet unresolved, that followed from those events," he said at Aida refugee camp outside Bethlehem.

"With anguish, I have witnessed the situation of refugees who, like the Holy Family, have had to flee their homes," he said.

Lieberman's party proposes ban on Arab Nakba

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's party wants to ban Israeli Arabs from marking the anniversary of what they term "the Catastrophe" or Nakba, when in 1948 some 700,000 Arabs lost their homes in the war that led to the establishment of the state of Israel.

The ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party said it would propose legislation next week for a ban on the practice and a jail term of up to three years for violators.

"The draft law is intended to strengthen unity in the state of Israel and to ban marking Independence Day as a day of mourning," said party spokesman Tal Nahum.

The initiative could fuel racial tensions stoked by Lieberman's February election campaign call to make voting or the holding of public office in Israel contingent on pledging loyalty to the Jewish state.

Arabs, who make up 20 percent of Israel's population, said the allegiance demand was aimed at them and accused Lieberman of racism.

Israel celebrated its Independence Day this year on April 29, in accordance with the Hebrew lunar calendar. Palestinian refugees around the world and Israel's Arab citizens mark the Nakba on May 15, the day after the British mandate over Palestine ended in 1948. (AFP, Reuters, Xinhua, WAFA )

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