Press Releases

Internally displaced Palestinians commemorate 1948 Nakba by visit to destroyed village with 3,000-year history

For Immediate Release

No. (E/13/04)

20 April 2004


More than 500 Palestinian villages and towns were occupied and depopulated with the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. As Israel celebrates its Independence Day, Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, the destruction of pre-1948 Palestinian society.

Today depopulation of Arab Palestinian villages in the Negev area of Israel continues and thousands of other Palestinians have been displaced by house demolitions, land confiscation and the building of illegal Jewish colonies in the Occupied Palestinian territories and eastern Jerusalem.

There are more than 260,000 internally displaced Palestinians, including their descendents, in Israel. They were uprooted and expelled from their villages during the 1948 war and after. They live in and are citizens of Israel although they do not have the full rights of Jewish Israeli citizens nor are they allowed to return to their homes and lands.

One depopulated village is Endor located southeast of Nazareth in the Galilee area of Israel. A visit to the village on 27 April will be part of the 56th commemoration of the Nakba (catastrophe) of the Palestinian people organized by ADRID, the Association for the Defense of the Rights of Internally Displaced Persons in Israel.

All that remains of Endor are the walls of 75 houses abandoned in 1948. It then had a population of some 620 Palestinian Arabs who owned 10,414 dunums of land in the area. The village is well-known in Biblical history as King Saul, the first king of ancient Israel, visited a soothsayer in the village of Endor 3,000 years ago. Endor’s former residents and their descendents are among the 260,000 Palestinians internally displaced within Israel.

ADRID’s commemoration ceremonies begin on Monday morning, 27 April, followed by a public rally, the 7th annual Right of Return March and a visit to Endor in the afternoon. For more information please call ADRID, Nazareth 4-986-1171. ADRID is one of BADIL’s partners and a member of the world-wide Right of Return Coalition.

ADRID will be joined in the Right of Return march by Zochrot, an Israeli organization for raising Jewish-Israel awareness of the Nakba and Palestinian refugee rights. Zochrot, on 26 April (20:00- 23:00), is holding a public discussion in Tel Aviv on the question of celebrating independence vs. the Nakba. For more information on Zochrot’s 26 April program and visit on the morning of 27 April to displaced Palestinians from Miske, call Eitan at 056-314229.