Commemorating the Palestinian Nakba
By: Embassy of the State of Palestine in Jakarta, Indonesia
Every year on May 15th, Palestinians commemorate Nakba, our ongoing catastrophe since 1948. Nakba is the root cause of what we are witnessing today in occupied Palestine. It is the root cause of our ongoing suffering.
Nakba refers to the mass expulsion and ethnic cleansing of our people, cities, and villages at the hands of extremist Jewish settler groups. Palestinian inhabitants that were forcibly displaced and never allowed to return.
The Nakba is not an event of the past, it is ongoing. For Israel, violently taking over 78% of historic Palestine was not enough. Land theft, expulsions and oppression have never stopped for a single day. Israel’s settler colonial project in Palestine has sought from the beginning to remove Palestinians from their homes and lands, and to replace them with Jewish Israelis.
The current escalation and assaults against the Palestinian people can only be understood in this context.
All mainstream human rights organisations agree now on the fact that we live under a situation of apartheid, and the crimes committed against Palestinians are war crimes.
The unprecedented assault on the Holy Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem during Ramadan. Besides, as Palestinians were celebrating Orthodox Easter, was a deliberate attempt by the occupying power to fuel the flames even further.
Moreover, the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, was killed “in cold blood” by Israeli forces in Jenin, while covering an Israeli security forces operation in the West Bank, is deeply shocking.
It is time to recognise that if a nation is made largely refugee, is under the occupation of a foreign, is confined to ever shrinking pieces of land, is under permanent threat of armed settler groups, one cannot stay ‘neutral’.
We implore the government of Indonesia and all the supporters of a fre Palestine in this country to intervene and activate the mechanisms international law and international humanitarian law, to hold the Israeli occupation accountable for its continuous violations against Palestinian civilians.
The international community should take the necessary steps to he stop human rights violations and war crimes committed by Israel. (AK/RE1)
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
