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60 Years
After the UN Partition Plan
Launch of the
“Nakba-60 Campaign” -
a Global
Campaign for the Inalienable Rights of the
Palestinian People
“We had a
country, but they they came and stole our
country”, members of the old generation of
Palestinian refugees from towns and villages
in what is now Israel summarize what
happened between 1947 – 1949, and they call
it the “Nakba” (catastrophe). “Look, they
are stealing our country”, say Palestinians
in the Israeli-occupied West Bank today.
They point at Israel's Wall, roads, military
checkpoints and Jewish colonies which
deprive them of access to some 40 percent of
the land and cause more displacement. “This
is our Nakba; the Nakba is ongoing”, they
say.
Today, 60 years
after the UN Partition Plan, Palestinians
and people of conscience worldwide launch a
year-long campaign of public
awareness-raising and education about the
Nakba and Israel's discriminatory
Apartheid-like regime over the Palestinian
people in the 1967 OPT, Israel and in exile.
60 years ago, on
27 November 1947, the United Nations
recommended partition of Palestine (UNGAR
181) against the wishes and rights under
international law of the indigenous
Palestinians who composed two thirds of the
country's population. The international
community envisioned that there should be
two states: a “Jewish state” on 55 percent
of the land - in the most fertile parts of
the country and with access to the sea -
for a population composed of an equal number
of Arabs and Jews; and, an “Arab state” on
the rest of the land, which - arid and
land-locked - was to survive with the help
of international aid.(1)
Today, the
international community rallies around the
new “Annapolis process” and continues to
pursue partition. Again, there is no
political will to respect, protect and
promote the rights of the Palestinian people
under international law, and international
aid is to ensure that the Palestinian
Authority and hope for a Palestinian state
will survive.
Meanwhile,
Israel claims legitimacy based on the
historic UN Partition Plan, although the
existing “Jewish state” and its proposals
for conflict resolution based on “two nation
states” or “two states for two peoples” do
not respect the right of “non-Jews” (i.e.
Palestinians) to equality as required under
the provisions of the 1947 UN plan,
subsequent UN resolutions and international
law. Not held accountable to international
law, and in deviation from Israel's common
stand that “we must never forget or
forgive”, Israel's Minister of Foreign
Affairs Tsipi Livni went even further, when
she said to her “Palestinian colleagues” in
Annapolis: “Do not bemoan the establishment
of the State of Israel ... for us the
establishment of the Palestinian state is
not our Nakba, or disaster – provided that
upon its establishment the word “Nakba” be
deleted from the Arabic lexicon in referring
to Israel.”
Palestinians,
however, insist in their rights to
commemorate suffering and injustice and seek
remedy for victims, in particular for
Palestinian refugees. The ongoing Nakba is
at the core of the agenda. The one-year-long
“Nakba-60 Campaign” launched today is
carried by Palestinian community networks,
the global Palestine Right-of-Return
Coalition and the global movement for
boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS)
against Israel until it respects
international law and universal human
rights. It is supported and coordinated
globally by a wide range of civil society
organizations and networks, including the
World Social Forum and the International
Coordinating Committee of NGOs on Palestine
(ICNP). The ICNP Call to Action for Nakba-60
is published today; it calls for concerted
global civil society efforts to promote the
inalienable rights of the Palestinian
people, in particular the right to
self-determination and return (UNGAR 3236 of
1974).
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For copies of the ICNP Call to Action and
information and events related to the
Nakba-60 Campaign see:
www.badil.org/campaign40-60/index.html
(1) UNSCOP Report, 3 September 1947, A/364.
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