UN to Commemorate Palestinian Nakba for First Time 

Palestinian Mustafa Abu Awad, 86, holds the key to the house he owned in 1948, at Nur Shams refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Tulkarem, 14 May 2023. (EPA)
Palestinian Mustafa Abu Awad, 86, holds the key to the house he owned in 1948, at Nur Shams refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Tulkarem, 14 May 2023. (EPA)
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UN to Commemorate Palestinian Nakba for First Time 

Palestinian Mustafa Abu Awad, 86, holds the key to the house he owned in 1948, at Nur Shams refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Tulkarem, 14 May 2023. (EPA)
Palestinian Mustafa Abu Awad, 86, holds the key to the house he owned in 1948, at Nur Shams refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Tulkarem, 14 May 2023. (EPA)

For the first time, the United Nations will officially commemorate the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from what is now Israel on the 75th anniversary of their exodus — an action stemming from the UN’s partition of British-ruled Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is headlining Monday’s UN commemoration of what Palestinians call the “Nakba” or “catastrophe.”

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, called the UN observance “historic” and significant because the General Assembly played a key role in the partition of Palestine.

“It’s acknowledging the responsibility of the UN of not being able to resolve this catastrophe for the Palestinian people for 75 years,” Mansour told a group of UN reporters recently.

He said “the catastrophe to the Palestinian people is still ongoing.” The Palestinians still don’t have an independent state, and they don’t have the right to return to their homes as called for in a General Assembly resolution adopted in December 1948.

Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, condemned the commemoration, calling it an “abominable event” and a “blatant attempt to distort history.” He said those who attend will be condoning anti-semitism and giving a green light to Palestinians “to continue exploiting international organs to promote their libelous narrative.”

The General Assembly, which had 57 member nations in 1947, approved the resolution dividing Palestine by a vote of 33-13 with 10 abstentions. The Jewish side accepted the UN partition plan and after the British mandate expired in 1948, Israel declared its independence. The Arabs rejected the plan and neighboring Arab countries launched a war against the Jewish state.

The Nakba commemorates the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes in 1948.

The fate of these refugees and their descendants — estimated at over 5 million across the Middle East — remains a major disputed issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel rejects demands for a mass return of refugees to long-lost homes, saying it would threaten the country’s Jewish character.

As the 75th anniversary approached, the now 193-member General Assembly approved a resolution last Nov. 30 by a vote of 90-30 with 47 abstentions requesting the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People organize a high-level event on May 15 to commemorate the Nakba.

The United States was among the countries that joined Israel in voting against the resolution, and the US Mission said no American diplomat will attend Monday’s commemoration.

Explaining why a UN commemoration took so long, Mansour told The Associated Press on Friday that the Palestinians have moved cautiously at the United Nations since the General Assembly raised their status in 2012 from a non-member observer to a non-member observer state.

UN recognition as a state enabled the Palestinians to join treaties, take cases against Israel’s occupation to the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, which is the UN’s highest tribunal, and in 2019 to chair the Group of 77, the UN coalition of 134 mainly developing nations and China, he said.

At the 70th anniversary of the 1948 exodus five years ago, Mansour said, “the word Nakba was used in a General Assembly resolution for the first time,” and Abbas then gave instructions to obtain a mandate from the UN to commemorate the 75th anniversary.

The Nakba commemoration comes as Israeli-Palestinian fighting has intensified and protests over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government and its plan to overhaul Israel’s judiciary show no sign of abating. Israel’s polarization and the Netanyahu government’s extremist positions have also sparked growing international concern.

Mansour said Friday that Palestinian refugees “are being forcibly removed from their homes and forcibly transferred by Israel at an unprecedented rate,” reminiscent of 1948.

In a speech to the UN Security Council on April 25, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Malki said “it is time to bring the Nakba to an end,” stressing that the Palestinians have suffered from the most protracted refugee crisis in the world and “the longest occupation of an entire territory in modern history.”

He was sharply critical of the UN and the wider international community for adopting resolutions that make demands and call for action— but doing nothing to implement them. He said if the international community made Israel's occupation costly, “I can assure you it will come to an end.”

Malki renewed his call for countries that haven’t yet recognized the state of Palestine “to do so as a means to salvage the moribund two-state solution.” He also urged countries to support the Palestinian request for full membership in the United Nations, which would demonstrate international support for a two-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians lived side-by-side in peace.

To hurt Israel economically, Malki urged countries to ban products from Israeli settlements and trade with settlements, to “sanction those who collect funds for settlements and those who advocate for them and those who advance them,” and to list settler organizations that carry out killings and burnings as “terrorist organizations.”

And he urged the international community to take Israel to the International Court of Justice. The General Assembly asked the court in December to give its opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, a move denounced by Israel.



Palestinian Authority Says Internet Down in Gaza After Attack on Fibre Optic Cable

Palestinians charge their mobile phones from a point powered by solar panels provided by Adel Shaheen, an owner of an electric appliances shop, as electricity remains cut during the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip October 19, 2023. REUTERS/Mohammed
Palestinians charge their mobile phones from a point powered by solar panels provided by Adel Shaheen, an owner of an electric appliances shop, as electricity remains cut during the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip October 19, 2023. REUTERS/Mohammed
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Palestinian Authority Says Internet Down in Gaza After Attack on Fibre Optic Cable

Palestinians charge their mobile phones from a point powered by solar panels provided by Adel Shaheen, an owner of an electric appliances shop, as electricity remains cut during the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip October 19, 2023. REUTERS/Mohammed
Palestinians charge their mobile phones from a point powered by solar panels provided by Adel Shaheen, an owner of an electric appliances shop, as electricity remains cut during the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip October 19, 2023. REUTERS/Mohammed

The Palestinian Authority said internet and fixed-line communication services were down in Gaza on Thursday following an attack on the territory's last fibre optic cable it blamed on Israel.

"All internet and fixed-line communication services in the Gaza Strip have been cut following the targeting of the last remaining main fibre optic line in Gaza," the PA's telecommunications ministry said in a statement, accusing Israel of attempting to cut Gaza off from the world, AFP reported.

"The southern and central Gaza Strip have now joined Gaza City and the northern part of the Strip in experiencing complete isolation for the second consecutive day," the ministry said in a statement.

It added that its maintenance and repair teams had been unable to safely access the sites where damage occurred to the fibre optic cable.

"The Israeli occupation continues to prevent technical teams from repairing the cables that were cut yesterday", it said, adding that Israeli authorities had prevented repairs to other telecommunication lines in Gaza "for weeks and months".

The Palestinian Red Crescent said the communication lines were "directly targeted by occupation forces".

It said the internet outage was hindering its emergency services by impeding communication with first responder teams in the field.

"The emergency operations room is also struggling to coordinate with other organisations to respond to humanitarian cases."

Maysa Monayer, spokeswoman for the Palestinian communication ministry, told AFP that "mobile calls are still available with very limited capacity" in Gaza for the time being.

Now in its 21st month, the war in Gaza has caused massive damage to infrastructure across the Palestinian territory, including water mains, power lines and roads.