Thursday, May 16, 2024

On Nakba Day, as Palestinians run for their lives, Biden advances $1 billion in arms sales to Israel – Day 221

On Nakba Day, as Palestinians run for their lives, Biden advances $1 billion in arms sales to Israel – Day 221

Palestinians in Gaza can’t seem to run fast enough to keep up with Israeli evacuation orders; can’t dig airstrike victims out of the rubble; Israel reportedly was aware of UN car that it bombed, killing a high-ranking international worker; Israeli police reportedly knew about aid convoy and allowed its destruction; Israel appears ready for a full-scale invasion of Rafah; Ben Gvir calls for expulsion; Palestinian killed in West Bank; Biden seeks approval for another $1 billion in military sales to Israel; campus protest update, more

By IAK staff, from reports

Palestinians mark 76 years of dispossession as a potentially even larger catastrophe unfolds in Gaza

Associated Press reports: Palestinians on Wednesday will mark the 76th year of their mass expulsion from what is now Israel, an event that is at the core of their national struggle. But in many ways, that experience pales in comparison to the calamity now unfolding in Gaza.

Palestinians refer to it as the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe. Some 700,000 Palestinians — a majority of the prewar population — fled or were driven from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment.

After the war, Israel refused to allow them to return because it would have resulted in a Palestinian majority within its borders.

Instead, they became a seemingly permanent refugee community that now numbers some 6 million, with most living in slum-like urban refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

In Gaza, the refugees and their descendants make up around three-quarters of the population.

Now, many Palestinians fear a repeat of their painful history on an even more cataclysmic scale.

All across Gaza, Palestinians in recent days have been loading up cars and donkey carts or setting out on foot to already overcrowded tent camps as Israel expands its offensive. The images from several rounds of mass evacuations throughout the seven-month war are strikingly similar to black-and-white photographs from 1948.

Mustafa al-Gazzar, now 81, still recalls his family’s months long flight from their village in what is now central Israel to the southern city of Rafah, when he was 5. At one point they were bombed from the air, at another, they dug holes under a tree to sleep in for warmth.

(Read the full article here.).... READ MORE  https://israelpalestinenews.org/on-nakba-day-as-palestinians-run-for-their-lives-biden-advances-1-billion-in-arms-sales-to-israel-day-221/

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

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