![]() He said Israel should recognize and apologize for the Nakba, which has created the world’s longest refugee crisis, and pay compensation to the refugees and for land it now occupies. He reiterated that the Palestinians have agreed to accept 22% of the 1947 territory as part of a two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not the 44% they were given in the partition.īut he said the two-state solution is being destroyed, pointing to Israeli ministers “publicly calling for another nakba against the Palestinians” and Israelis calling for the killing of Palestinians, insisting defiantly that the Palestinians will never leave or give up East Jerusalem, which they want as their capital.Ībbas said Palestinians are not against Jews, but “I am against those who occupy our land.” He was born in Safed in the Galilee, now part of Israel, and said like other Palestinian refugees he wants to go home. The Palestinian leader said the most important right Palestinians are demanding now is self-determination and an independent state based on June 1967 borders. “And Israel would not have continued its hostility and aggression without the support it receives from these two countries,” he said.Ībbas strongly criticized Israel for calling itself the only democracy in the Middle East, saying “it is the only state in the world that occupies another people.” And he rejected Israel’s insistence that it “made the desert bloom,” saying Palestine pre-1947 was “very civilized,” green, with lakes and rivers, and exported oranges to Europe. Israel’s polarization and the Netanyahu government’s extremist positions have also sparked growing international concern.Ībbas specifically blamed Britain, as Palestine’s ruler before the 1947 partition, and the United States, Israel’s most important ally, for the flight of the Palestinians, saying they “bear political and ethical responsibility” for evicting Palestinians and implanting Israel “in our historic homeland.” 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 rejects demands for a mass return of refugees to long-lost homes, saying it would threaten the country’s Jewish character. 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. The Nakba commemorates the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes in 1948. ![]() The Arabs rejected the plan and neighboring Arab countries launched a war against the Jewish state. ![]() partition plan and after the British mandate expired in 1948, Israel declared its independence. The General Assembly, which had 57 member nations in 1947, approved the resolution dividing Palestine by a vote of 33-13 with 10 abstentions.
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