Wednesday, 15 May 2013 / Agence France Presse – Protesters
clashed Wednesday with Israeli forces in the West Bank as thousands of
Palestinians commemorated the Nakba – “catastrophe” – of the Jewish
state’s creation in 1948, during which 760,000 Palestinians fled their
homes.
Israeli soldiers fired rubber bullets at protesters gathered in front of
Ofer military prison near Ramallah, wounding 15 of them, Palestinian
medical officials said. Demonstrators pelted soldiers with stones, the
army said.
In east Jerusalem, police clashed with demonstrators outside the Old
City’s Damascus Gate, police spokeswoman Luba Samri told AFP, saying
three policemen were injured and eight Palestinians arrested.
Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip to demonstrate on Nakba Day and assert their “right to
return” to where their ancestors fled after the Israeli victory over
Arab armies.
Protesters held aloft Palestinian flags and replicas of the keys to the
houses their families abandoned in 1948. Some 1,000 people turned out in
the northern West Bank town of Nablus, and another 300 in southern
Hebron.
In Hamas-ruled Gaza, thousands of people gathered in the centre of Gaza
City, holding placards that read “We will get back to Palestinian
villages and towns, no matter how long it takes” and “The right of
return is sacred and inalienable”.
In Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority is based, sirens sounded
for 65 seconds, representing the 65 years of the existence of the modern
state of Israel.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in a televised speech on Tuesday
evening said “there is no country in the world, including the United
States of America, that denies our right to establish our independent
state based on the 1967 borders” — a reference to land occupied by
Israel since the Six Day War.
“We are today a number (of people) and a truth that cannot be overlooked,” he said.
In 1948, more than 760,000 Palestinians — estimated today to number more
than five million with their descendants — fled or were driven out of
their homes.
Around 160,000 Palestinians stayed behind and are now known as Arab
Israelis. They now number about 1.3 million people, or some 20 percent
of the population.
source: http://gm2j.com
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