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Wednesday, May 19, 2004 - ore 10:30
Palestina: Nakba
(categoria: " Pensieri ")
THE GRASSROOTS PALESTINIAN ANTI-APARTHEID WALL CAMPAIGN WEEKLY E-NEWSLETTER
StoptheWall.org in a Week
from the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
May 16, 2004
On the 56th Commemoration of the Nakba:
No to the Wall!
No to the New Expulsion!
Campaign Statement on Nakba Day
Fifty-six years since the Nakba
Fifty-six years since the Nakba, fifty-six years of uprooting and Occupation, yet in the Palestinian memory Palestine will always remain Palestine. The past years and recent days have proven to those convinced that our cause will die that they are mistaken--the older our struggle becomes the more it is alive in the Palestinian consciousness. The return of refugees is our right, the state of Palestine and our identity is our right and neither of them can be negotiated or compromised. All this stands, despite our harsh reality, and despite the voices of those calling for projects that seek to erase our collective memories and release the criminals from the responsibility of their crimes, both past and present. [More]
Community Voices
Walaja: The Continuing Nakba
Above: Abu Nidal finds the original location of Walaja on a map dating from the 1920s.
Walaja is located south west of Jerusalem. The village was Occupied in October 1948, but Palestinian and Egyptian guerillas fought off the Israeli battalions and successfully defended their village. Several times they were able to force the Occupation troops to withdraw, but in the end the village was Occupied. (Al Khalidi, Wallid 1992: All That Remains). Walaja was then destroyed, and Aminadav settlement was built on its lands along with an Israeli park.
About the 1948 exodus, Abu Nidal, a farmer from the village, says:
"This is not the real Walaja, this is part of its lands, and the original Walaja was between Battir and Malha. In 1948, it was destroyed by the Occupation bulldozers more than once and its lands were confiscated. After 1967, the Occupation confiscated the rest of its lands for the "Gilo" settlement, Gilo is built on more than one third of Walaja’s lands.
In the seventies the Settlers in Aminadav took over more lands from Walaja and began cultivating them, while the Occupation forces sued the Walaja farmers, claiming that they were using the lands of the "State of Israel", although the "truce line" is far from us, but they considered these lands as "no man's" lands. They [occupation forces] also planted a forest on the green line but they crossed it.
After 1948 the people of Walaja moved to these lands here, they lived in mud houses, and caves, the ones who had money lived in stone houses, we had nothing here, no services, no roads, no water or electricity supplies. We created everything in the following years, but we still hoped we would return. The ones who settled here were part of the village's people, the rest went to Jordan, now there are twenty thousand refugees in Jordan camps from Al Walaja, another part are living in Bethlehem's refugee camps." [More]
Feature/Analysis
Nakba - 56 Years Later
by Zakiya Fareed, Media Review Network
"15 May 2004 will see yet another commemoration of the Nakba [Cataclysm]. And a cataclysm it truly was. How else can one describe the mass deportation of a million people from their cities and villages, the massacre of hundreds of civilians and the razing to the ground of hundreds of once prosperous villages?
In 1948, this is exactly what happened to the Palestinians. Dispossessed of their homes and thrown out of the land, hundreds of them brutally killed and their villages destroyed in an attempt by the Israelis to erase the mere existence of the Palestinians. Those Palestinians in the diaspora are not homeless - but they are being denied their right to return to their homes.
This is not an isolated event - it was just the beginning - 56 years ago it was Lubya, Tantura, Deir Yassin, among about 400 other villages. In 1967 it was the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem. In 2002 it was the massacre in Jenin and today we are seeing the destruction of Rafah and the stealing of land with the construction of the Apartheid Wall." [More]
Worldwide Activism
10,000 Strong Rally in London Against the Apartheid Wall
On May 15th, 10,000 gathered in Trafalgar Square, which was transformed for one afternoon into a sea of banners, placards and posters demanding Freedom for Palestine and the fall of the Apartheid Wall.
The national rally, organized every year on Nakba Day by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), was a great success, showing clear support by the British in the struggle for justice and freedom for all the Palestinian people. For three hours demonstrators from all over Britain listened and cheered the words of a large number of speakers, each voicing the same demands: Stop the Apartheid Wall! Free Palestine! Free Iraq! All of the speakers condemned not only Israel but the American and British governments for their collective crimes as leaders in the era of New Colonialism. [More]
Above: Crowds fill Trafalgar Square to listen to speakers during the annual Palestine Solidarity Campaign demonstration held on May 15th, Nakba Day.
Mainstream Media
Rafah Homes Demolished, Refugees Expelled Once Again
Over the last two days Occupation forces have destroyed more than 100 homes in Rafah along the Egyptian border, leaving 1500 people, refugees from the Nakba, homeless, refugees once again. Residents have been given no warning, often the bulldozers start demolishing the homes with the families still inside, and all they are left with is what they can quickly gather up and carry with them. After being officially sanctioned by the Occupation courts, Occupation forces are in the process of carrying out a further massive operation which will raze hundreds more homes, and massacre Palestinians. For most of the day Apache Helicopters and F-16s have been shelling the city relentlessly. Within the first few hours of the attacks, 20 people were killed, which added to the totals from the days before leaves more than 50 people dead. Many Rafah residents have since fled their homes in fear of further death and destruction, heading deeper into the camp.
Occupation commanders say that this "operation could be the last chance to change things in Gaza and create a new reality." This new reality will allow the Occupation to control the only international border Palestinians currently have with the Egyptian-Gaza border. Israel is well aware that the only way they can do this is by wiping away most of the camp and ethnically cleansing it of its overcrowded refugee population.
For Israel, "securing" the borders of the Strip shows just how willing they really are to withdraw from Gaza. Building an iron wall on the ruins of the houses of the Palestinian people, and now further isolating and expanding the area between the two separated sections of Rafah, is completely unjustified if Israel is truly intending to withdraw. [More]
StopTheWall.org
Visit the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign web site.
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