IT IS that time of the year when Palestinians all over the world commemorate another year since their Catastrophe, the Nakba, which hit them in 1948, when a state was created on their land for a people who did not come from the land and when 750,000 indigenous Palestinians were expelled to neighbouring countries.
A peaceful people, that had endured an unwelcome and often violent British occupation under the UN mandate for Palestine awarded in 1920, were once again occupied by another group of foreigners.
During the mandate, the UK worked tirelessly to make good on its shameful promise to assist the zionist movement to create a homeland for Jews in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 had complete disregard for the overwhelming existing Palestinian majority who inhabited historic Palestine, not consulting them and referring to them as simply “communities.”
Unlike the inhabitants of Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, they were the only inhabitants of an area created by the British and the French under the Sykes-Picot agreement that were not helped to gain independence.
Every year the Palestinians live that painful and catastrophic dispossession again. The refugees and those in the diaspora are still unable to return to their homes due to Israel’s refusal to allow them back, while Israel allows any Jewish person from anywhere in the world to move to historic Palestine, to gain citizenship and to live anywhere they choose — whether in what is now regarded as Israel proper or illegally occupied Palestinian territory.
Around May 15 stories from the Nakba are told by survivors to their relatives and at the same time, the keys to homes they were evicted from are handed down to the next generation to ensure the yearning to return lives on.