Despite Israeli pleas, most EU states attend UN’s Palestinian Nakba event

The commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Nakba in the General Assembly Hall at the United Nations on 15 May 2023

Amir Tibon reports in Haaretz on 16 May 2023:

A majority of EU member states sent representatives to the UN’s first Nakba Day commemoration event despite Israeli efforts at discouraging them from attending.

Several of these states informed Israel in advance of their plans to attend, however most sent lower-level diplomats rather than their ambassadors. Countries that attended the event include France, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, and Malta. Both the U.S. and the U.K. governments said in advance that they wouldn’t be sending any representatives to the event.

Nakba is the Arabic word for disaster, which Palestinians use to refer to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of persons during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.

Israel’s main concern about the event is that it sets a precedent in the UN marking the Nakba in the General Assembly. The event came after a decision taken in December that won the backing of 90 countries with 30 opposed.

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan, called the event “despicable” and “false,” while Public Diplomacy Minister Galit Distel Atbaryan said that the “The UN ignores the fact that Arabs are responsible for creating the so-called Palestinian refugee problem” in a tweet condemning the event.

Sweden’s participation occurred several hours after Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen finished his visit to Stockholm, the first by an Israeli foreign minister to the country in two decades. “We are opening a new page in relations between Israel and Sweden, after years in which Sweden took a critical line against Israel,”

Since last year, Sweden has been governed by a center-right government that relies on the support of the hard right. The government is expected to adopt a much friendlier attitude toward Israel, but it does not appear that it intends to reverse Sweden’s earlier recognition of a Palestinian state.

The Palestinian Authority lauded the event and called it another step forward in international recognition of the Nakba.  “In today’s Israel there are dangerous voices that deny the existence of the Palestinian people and all this under the auspices of the Israeli government. There are those who openly call for murdering the Palestinians and deporting them, and this is what the Israeli government is doing – led by Netanyahu together with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir,” Abbas added.

Last week, a similar event commemorating the Nakba occurred for the first time in the U.S. Congress, taken at the initiative of the Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, whose family is of Palestinian origin and is a well-known critic of Israel.

Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the house, banned the ceremony from taking place in the lower house of Congress, prompting an invitation from the Jewish senator, Bernie Sanders, to hold it in a building belonging to the Senate. The event under his sponsorship attracted about 200 people.

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