Facebook activists commemorate the Nakba

GAZA, (PIC)– Facebook activists stressed that they adhere to their right of return and will continue to write about their country; despite the website administration’s ban on the commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the Nakba on its pages. The Palestinian activists posted thousands of photos, maps and information about the Palestinian towns and cities from which the residents have been forcibly displaced. Professor of Mathematics at the Islamic University Mohammed Rify said “the Nakba represents an inevitable outcome of splintering of the Arab nation and domination of the rulers.” Cameraman Mohamed Osman says that he has sustained wounds two years ago in marches of commemoration of the Nakba, but he has become more determined to persist. The writer Ahmed Abu Ratima called on his facebook page for taking affirmative action in order to achieve the right of return. (Source / 19.05.2013)

On Nakba Anniversary, Refugees Make almost Half of Population

RAMALLAH, May 14, 2013 (WAFA) – On the eve of the Nakba (catastrophe) 65th anniversary, the refugees make almost half of the total Palestinian population, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said Tuesday.

Palestinian refugees separated from their home by the “green line”. 1948 UNRWA photo

While statistical data show that refugees constitute 44.2% of the total Palestinian population in Palestine, records by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) showed that there were 5.3 million registered Palestinian refugees by mid-2013, constituting 45.7% of the total Palestinian population worldwide, said the PCBS.

It said 59% of the refugees live in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, 17% in the West Bank and 24% in Gaza Strip.

About 29% of registered refugees live in 58 refugee camps, of which 10 are in Jordan, nine in Syria, 12 in Lebanon, 19 in the West Bank, and eight in Gaza Strip.

The PCBS said, however, that these estimates represent the minimum number of Palestinian refugees, given the fact that there are many non-registered refugees.

These estimates also do not include Palestinians who were displaced between 1949 and the 1967 war and do not include the non-refugees who left or were forced to leave as a result of the war in 1967.

The number of Palestinians who remained in their towns and village in 1948 after the Nakba was estimated at 154,000. Their number is now estimated as 1.4 million on the 65rd anniversary of the Nakba.

In 1948, 1.4 million Palestinians lived in 1,300 Palestinian towns and villages in historic Palestine.

The Israelis controlled 774 towns and villages and destroyed 531 Palestinian towns and villages during the Nakba.

More than 800,000 of the population were driven out of their homeland to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, neighboring Arab countries and other countries of the world.

The Palestinian population worldwide is estimated 11.6 million by the end of 2012, said the PCBS. This means that the number of Palestinians worldwide has multiplied eight-fold in the 65 years since the Nakba.

A total of 5.8 million live in historic Palestine and this number is expected to rise to 7.2 million by the end of 2020, based on current growth rates, said the PCBS.

(Source / 15.05.2013)

Thousands mark Nakba Day in the West Bank and Gaza

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Thousands of people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Wednesday marked the 65th anniversary of the Nakba, an event which saw hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from their homes in what is now Israel.

Sirens were sounded for 65 seconds in the West Bank to mark the start of celebrations, with thousands of people gathering in Ramallah, Nablus, Qalqiliya and other West Bank cities.

“The right to return does not become invalid or ineffective as time passes, because this right is the core of the Palestinian plight,” PLO official Wasil Abu Yousif said while addressing crowds at Yasser Arafat’s tomb.

In Nablus, a minute’s silence was held before demonstrators marched in the city waving black flags and Palestinian flags side by side.

“After all these years of the Nakba, the Palestinian people have not achieved their goals, but they have managed to accumulate major victories, such as establishing the PLO in order to tell the Palestinian narrative,” the governor of Nablus Jibril al-Bakri said.

In Gaza, faction leaders addressed thousands of people who had gathered in the streets, calling for unity in the Palestinian leadership as a number one priority.

“The Palestinian people have made hundreds of sacrifices during 65 years of Nakba in order to establish a Palestinian state and stick to the right of return,” Fatah leader Faysal Abu Shahla said.

Nasser Salih, a Gaza-based leader with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said the Palestinian people have stayed firm on their land and insist on the right of return “despite all attempts and efforts to erase Palestinian national identity.”

Senior PFLP leader Kayid al-Ghoul said national unity is vital in order to overcome pressure to accept an “alternative homeland,” while Islamic Jihad said that Israel’s occupation is void and must be resisted by all possible means.

More than 760,000 Palestinians — estimated today to number 4.8 million with their descendants — were pushed into exile or driven out of their homes in the conflict surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.

Around 160,000 Palestinians, who remained in Israel after 1948, now number around 1.36 million people, or 20 percent of the country’s population.

(Source / 15.05.2013)

Zionists plan to colonize Palestine in 1899 NY Times

Zionists plan to colonize Palestine in 1899 NY Times

An article about a Conference of Zionists published on July 20, 1899 in the New York Times depicts how the Conference sought to “colonize Palestine” and discussed the purchasing of land with English Zionists.

An article about a Conference of Zionists published on July 20, 1899 in the New York Times expresses that the Zionists “will colonize Palestine.”
The article explains that the conference discussed a paper from the English Zionist Federation “proposing the re-establishment of Judea as an independent State, suggesting the purchase of the Maccabean sites in Palestine, and the beginning of the work by the establishment of a Jewish colony and a Jewish Agricultural College there.”

It further clarifies that “The site to be purchased comprises about fifty acres, six miles from a station on the railroad between Jappa and Jerusalem, and within sight of the sea and a large stretch of the Palestinian coast.”

It notes that English Zionists have gathered 2,500 dollars in the currency of the period and request that quantity from the American Zionists.

The article also explains that “On motion of Dr. Wise, the Federation voted $100 as the nucleus of the required fund of $2,500, the remainder to be raised by subscriptions from the 125 societies and individuals, both Jews and Gentiles. A general appeal to the public will be made.”

It also conveys that delegates will be elected at the Zionist meeting in Baltimore.

The straightforward and comfortable manner with which the colonization is pursued is indicative how, before having to be concerned with the image of Zionism and public relations, Zionist leaders depicted their movement as a colonial mission during a time in which European nations were colonial powers.

(Source /15.05.2013)

Right Of Return Coalition calls For Unity, Rejects Arab Initiative

The International Palestinian Right of Return Coalition issued a press release marking the 65th anniversary of the Nakba of 1948, and called on all Palestinian factions to achieve unity and to remain steadfast without abandoning the legitimate Palestinian rights, topped by the Right of Return of the refugees to their homeland, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

The coalition, that includes twenty institutions and rights groups, said “as the Palestinians mark the Nakba day, when Israeli armed forces displaced hundreds of villages and towns displacing an attire population before Israeli was established in the historic land of Palestine in 1948, the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank must denounce any attempt to void the Right of Return.”

It added that the leadership must denounce the Arab League for suggesting land swap with Israel, and for sending a delegation to Washington to discuss the issue, and stated that the internationally guaranteed Palestinian rights of Return and independence are nonnegotiable.

The coalition stated that the Arab League and its Arab Peace Initiative must quit granting Israel free concessions, must withdraw their initiative, and focus their efforts on supporting the resistance and the steadfastness of the Palestinian people facing the ongoing Israeli occupation and aggression.

It further called on all Palestinian factions to reject all attempts that aim at forcing the Palestinians to abandon their rights, especially their rights in the historic land of Palestine, and their rights to return to their homeland, to their cities, villages and towns that were destroyed and depopulated by the Israeli forces.

“Arab leaders must understand that without the Right of Return, without justice, there will never be peace in the region”, the Coalition said, “The refugees cause is an essential cause that cannot be compromised or abandoned”.

The coalition further called for the protection of the Palestinian refugees wherever they are, especially in Syria amidst the ongoing clashes in the country, and to refrain from using the refugees in Syria as a tool in the ongoing war in the country.

—- —- —- —-

“Palestinian refugees are the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, the majority of whom were dispossessed, were forced to run away or were expelled when the state of Israel was created in 1948.

This dispossession and expulsion has continued since with the second largest such event in Palestine taking place during the 1967 war, which Israel launched on its Arab neighbors and which resulted in the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.”

“Palestinian refugees generally fall into three main groups: Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948, internally displaced Palestinians who remained within the areas that became the state of Israel, and Palestinian refugees displaced in 1967 from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. For the past 58 years, Israel has continued to deny Palestinian refugees their right to return to their ancestral towns, villages and homes.”

 

(Source / 15.05.2013)

Balfour’s Apartheid Legacy ~ by Stuart Littlewood

 

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By Stuart Littlewood | 5 November 2011 | Redress

Stuart Littlewood charts the British lies and duplicity, manifested most blatantly in the Balfour Declaration whereby Britain promised to give something it did not own (Palestine) to someone who had no right to have (the Zionist settlers), and the resulting bloodshed, pain and injustice.

Arthur Balfour​‘s infamous “Declaration” was written 94 years ago this week. Palestinians, of course, don’t need reminding.

And to mark the anniversary Israel ordered its warships to carry out yet another act of piracyon peaceful, innocent shipping carrying humanitarian relief to the imprisoned people of Gaza.

British duplicity

Let’s cast out minds back – Stephen Ostrander’s simple verse cuts through all the rhetoric to the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

For centuries long
our land enslaved
by Turkish kings
with sharpened blade.

We prayed to end
the Sultan’s curse,
the British came
and spoke a verse.

“It’s World War One,
if you agree
to fight with us
we’ll set you free.”

The war we fought
at Britain’s side,
our blood was shed
for Arab pride.

At war’s end
Turks were smitten,
our only gain,
the lies of Britain.

The country called Palestine was “liberated” from Turkish Ottoman rule after the Allied powers, in correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and Sharif Hussein ibn Ali of Mecca in 1915, promised Arab leaders independence in return for their help in defeating Germany’s ally.

“In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad…”Arthur Balfour, British Foreign Secretary, 1916-19

However a Jewish political movement, Zionism, was finding favour among the ruling élite in London, and the British government was persuaded by the Zionists’ chief spokesman, Chaim Weizmann​, to surrender Palestine for their new Jewish homeland. Hardly a thought, it seems, was given to the earlier pledge to the Arabs, who had occupied and owned the land for 1,500 years – longer than the ancient Jews ever did.

The Zionists, inflated by the notion that an ancient Biblical prophecy gave them the title deeds, planned to push the Arabs out by bringing in millions of Eastern European Jews. They had already set up farm communities and founded a new city, Tel Aviv, but by 1914 Jews numbered only 85,000 to the Arabs’ 615,000.

Balfour Declaration

The Balfour Declaration of 1917​ – actually a letter from the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, to the most senior Jew in England, Lord Rothschild – pledged assistance for the Zionist cause, ignoring the consequences to the native majority.

Calling itself a “declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations”, it said:

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing and non-Jewish communities…

Balfour, an ardent Zionist, wrote:

In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now occupy that land.

He later wrote the introduction to a book published in 1919, History of Zionism 1600-1919 by Nahum Sokolow, in which he said: “Conversations I held with Mr Weizmann in January 1906 convinced me that history could not thus be ignored, and that if a home was to be found for the Jewish people, homeless now for nearly nineteen hundred years, it was vain to seek it anywhere but in Palestine.”

Some opposed the idea. Lord Sydenham​ warned:

The harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country may never be remedied. What we have done, by concessions not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, is to start a running sore in the East, and no-one can tell how far that sore will extend.

The American King-Crane Commission of 1919 thought it a gross violation of principle. “No British officers consulted by the commissioners believed that the Zionist programme could be carried out except by force of arms. That, of itself, is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist programme.”

And the scheme was heading for serious trouble for another reason. A secret deal, called the Sykes-Picot Agreement, had been concluded in 1916 between France and Britain, in consultation with Russia, to re-draw the map of the Middle Eastern territories won from Turkey. Britain was to take Jordan, Iraq and Haifa. The area now referred to as Palestine was declared an international zone.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Balfour Declaration and the promises made earlier in the McMahon-Hussein letters all cut across each other. Was it really a case of the left hand not knowing what the right was doing in the confusion of war?

After the Russian Revolution of 1917 Lenin released a copy of the confidential Sykes-Picot Agreement into the public domain, sowing seeds of distrust among the Arabs. The unfolding story, from the start, had all the makings of a major tragedy. Subsequent crimes – on both sides – flow from this triple-cross.

Apartheid and occupation: “in practice there is little difference”

At Cambridge Arthur Balfour read moral sciences, but much good it did the poor Palestinian Arabs he helped dispossess.

Described as born lazy, aloof and having an attitude problem, he was convinced of his personal superiority and wished to keep the vulgar world at arm’s length. Balfour famously said: “Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.”

He was said to be a man who would make almost any sacrifice to remain in office. In this case, he sacrificed the Arab homeland. In 1922 the League of Nations put Palestine under British mandate, which incorporated the principles of the Balfour’s Declaration.

How have things turned out?

John Dugard​, a professor of international law and former Special Rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council on the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, explains@@ on Aljazeera the differences and similarities between apartheid South Africa and apartheid Israel.

Of course, the regimes of apartheid and occupation are different. Apartheid South Africa was a state that practised discrimination against its own people. It sought to fragment the country into white South Africa and black bantustans. Its security laws were used to brutally suppress opposition to apartheid. Israel, on the other hand, is an occupying power that controls a foreign territory and its people under a regime recognized by international law – belligerent occupation.

However, in practice, there is little difference. Both regimes were/are characterized by discrimination, repression and territorial fragmentation (that is, land seizures).

Israel discriminates against Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in favour of half a million Israeli settlers. Its restrictions on freedom of movement, manifested in countless humiliating checkpoints, resemble the “pass laws” of apartheid. Its destruction of Palestinian homes resembles the destruction of homes belonging to blacks under apartheid’s Group Areas Act. The confiscation of Palestinian farms under the pretext of building a security wall brings back similar memories. And so on. Indeed, Israel has gone beyond apartheid South Africa in constructing separate (and unequal) roads for Palestinians and settlers.

Apartheid’s security police practised torture on a large scale. So do the Israeli security forces. There were many political prisoners on Robben Island​ but there are more Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails.

Apartheid South Africa seized the land of blacks for whites. Israel has seized the land of Palestinians for half a million settlers and for the purposes of constructing a security wall within Palestinian territory – both of which are contrary to international law.

The “running sore” Sydenham warned of has been festering for 94 years, crippling the Middle East and turning the Holy Land into an abomination. Balfour and his clueless pals in the corridors of British power clearly had no idea of the true purpose and base methods of Zionism

(Source / 15.05.2013)

Infographic: An Ongoing Displacement – The forced exile of the Palestinians

Visualizing Palestine has released its latest infographic to coincide with the 65th anniversary of the Nakba.

(Source / 15.05.2013)

 

For Palestinians, the Nakba is not history

The Nakba has a dual meaning today. On one hand, it is about the hundreds of villages that were razed in 1948 and the hundreds of thousands of refugees who lost their homes. On the other hand, Palestinians continue to suffer the Nakba daily – the separation of families, continuous confiscations of land and settlements choking every Palestinian village and town.

Palestinians today mark 64 years since the Nakba (catastrophe). They are not commemorating a historical event that has long passed, or a sad moment in their past. Many of the Palestinian people are living the reality of the Nakba today. The pain of the open wound has not healed.

Sixty-four years after the Nakba, Palestinians still have no state and no equality. Refugee camps still exist all over the world and a majority of Palestinians live in the diaspora. Against their will, the Nakba divided the Palestinian people between Palestine and diaspora, between Gaza and the West Bank, between those who hold a refugee identification card and who don’t.

The Nakba has a dual meaning today. On one hand, it is about the hundreds of villages that were razed in 1948 and the hundreds of thousands of refugees who lost their homes. I remember taking a group to Qubeibeh, a Palestinian village on the outskirts of Hebron. Qubeibeh was destroyed in 1948. On the trip, I asked two Palestinians who lived there before the war to join us. They walked around the destroyed village telling the stories of each house, each family, the gossip of the town, funny and sad anecdotes. The tears streaming down their faces were tears of longing and passion, about loss and love.

Letter from David Ben-Gurion to his son Amos

Letter from David Ben-Gurion to his son Amos, written 5 October 1937

Obtained from the Ben-Gurion Archives in Hebrew, and translated into English by

the Institute of Palestine Studies, Beirut

5 October 1937

Dear Amos,

I was not angry at you, but I was very sorry indeed that there was no reply from you. I cannot accept the excuse that you have no time. I know you have a lot ofwork at school, in the field, and at home, and I am happy that you are so preoccupied with your studies. But it is always possible to find free time if necessary, not only on Sabbath days but even during weekdays. Your excuse that I keep moving from one country to another is not convincing. You can write to me in London. Here they [the Jewish Agency office] always know where I am, and they are efficient in forwar ding my mail. As to the question of my membership in the executive committee [of the Jewish Agency], I shall explain to you in person if I meet you in Tel Aviv upon my return. Here what I want to talk about is the conflict you are experiencing between your reason and your emotions with regard to the question of the state. Political matters should not be a question of emotions. The only thing that should be taken into account is what we want and what is best for us, what will lead to the objective, and which are the policies that will make us

succeed and which will make us fail.

It seems to me that I, too, have “emotions” [quotation marks in original. Hebrew: regesh] Without these emotions I would nothave been able to endure decades of our hard work. It definitely does not hurt my feelings [regesh] that a state isestablished, even if it is small.

Of course the partition of the country gives me no pleasure. But the country that they [the Royal (Peel) Commission] are partitioning is not in our actual possession; it is in the possession of the Arabs and the English. What is in our actual possession is a small portion, less thanwhat they [the Peel Commission] are proposing for a Jewish state. If I were an Arab I would have been very indignant.But in this proposed partition we will get more than what we already have, though of course much less than we merit and desire. The question is:  would we obtain more without partition? If things were to remain as they are [emphasis in original], would this satisfy our feelings? What we really want is not that the land remain whole and unified. What we want is that the whole and unified land be Jewish [emphasis original]. A unified Eretz Israeli would be no source of satisfaction for me— if it were Arab.

From our standpoint, the status quo is deadly poison. We want to change the statusquo [emphasis original]. But how canthis change come about? How can this land become ours? The decisive question is:Does the
establishment of a Jewish state [in only part of Palestine] advance or retard the conversion of this country into aJewish country?

My assumption (which is why I am a fervent proponent of a state, even though it is now linked to partition) is that a Jewish state on only part of the land is not the end but the beginning.

When we acquire one thousand or 10,000 dunams, we feel elated  It does not hurt our feelings that by this acquisition we are not in possession of the whole land.  This is because this increase in possession is of consequence not only in itself, but because through it we increase our strength, and every increase in strength helps in the possession of the land as a whole. The establishment of a state, even if only on a portion of the
land, is the maximal reinforcement of our strength at the presenttime and a powerful boost to our historical endeavors to liberate the entire country.

We shall admit into the state all the Jews we can.  We firmly believe that we can admit more than two million Jews. We shall build a multi-faceted Jewish economy— agricultural, industrial, and mar itime. We shall organize an advanced defense force—a superior army which I have no doubt will be one of the best armies in the world. At that point I am confident that we would not fail in settling in the remaining parts of the country, through agreement
and understanding with our Arab neighbors, or thro ugh some other means.

We must always keep in mind the fundament al truths that make our settlement of this land imperative and possible. They are two or three: it is not the British Mandate nor the Balfour Declaration. Th ese are consequences, not causes. They are the products of coincidence: contingent, ephemeral, and they will come to an end.  They were not inevitable. They could not have occurred but for the World War, or rather, they would not
have occurred if the war had not ended the way it did.

But on the other hand there are fundamental [emphasis original] historical truths, unalterable as long as Zionism is not fully realized. These are:

1) The pressure of the Exile, which continues to push the Jews with propulsive force towards the country

2) Palestine is grossly under populated. It contains vast colonization potential which the Arabs neither
need nor are qualified (because of their lack of need) to exploit. There is no Arab immigration problem.
There is no Arab exile. Arabs are not persecuted. They have a homeland, and it is vast.

3) The innovative talents of the Jews (a consequence of point 1 above), their ability to make the desert
bloom, to create industry, to build an economy, to develop culture, to conquer the sea and space with the
help of science and pioneering endeavor.

These three fundamental truths will be reinforced by the existence of a Jewish state in a part of the country,
just as Zionism will be reinforced by every conquest, large or small, every school, every factory, every  Jewish ship, etc.

Our ability to penetrate the country will increase if we have a state. Our strength vis-à-vis
the Arabs will likewise increase. The possibilities for construction and multiplication will speedily expand. The greater the Jewish strength in the country, the more the Arabs will realize that it is neither beneficial nor possible for them to withstand us. On the contrary, it will be possible for the Arabs to benefit enormously  from the Jews, not only materially but politically as well.

I do not dream of war nor do I like it. But I still believe, more than I did before the emergence of the possibility of a Jewish state, that once we are numerous and powerful in the country the Arabs will realize that it is better for them to become our allies.

They will derive benefits from our assistance if they, of their own free will, give us the opportunity to settle in all parts of the country. The Arabs have many countries that are under-populated, underdeveloped, and vulnerable, incapable with their own strength to stand up to their external enemies. Without France, Syria could not last for one day against an onslaught from Turkey. The same applies to Iraq and to the new [Palestinian] state [under the Peel plan]. All of these stand in need of the protection of France or Britain. This need for protection means subjugation and dependence on the other. But the Jews could be equal allies, real friends, not occupiers or tyrants over them.

Let us assume that the Negev will not be allotted to the Jewish state. In such event, the Negev will remain barren because theArabs have neither the competence nor the need to develop it or make it prosper. They already have an abundance of deserts but not of manpower, financial resources, or creative initiative. It is very probable that
they will agree that we undertake the development of the Negev and make it prosper in return for our financial, military, organizational, and scientific assistance. It is also possible that they will not agree. People don’t always behave according to logic, common sense, or their own practical advantage. Just as you yourself are sometimes split conflicted between your mind and your emotions, it ispossible that the Arabs will follow the dictates of sterile nationalist emotions and tell us: “We want neither your honey nor your sting.  We’d rather that the Negev remain barren than that Jews should inhabit it.” If this occurs, we will have to talk to them in a different language—and we will have a different language—but such a language will not be ours without a state. This is so because we can no longer tolerate that vast territories capable of absorbing tens of thousands of Jews should remain vacant, and that Jews cannot return to their homeland because the Arabs prefer that the place [the Negev] remains neither ours nor theirs  We must expel Arabs and take their place. Up to now, all our aspirations have been based on an

assumption – one that has been vindicated throughout our activities in the country– that there is enough room in the land for the Arabs and ourselves. But if we are compelled to use force – not in order to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev or Transjordan, but in order to guarantee our right to settle there – our force will enable us to do so.

Clearly in such event we will have to deal not only with the Arabs living in Eretz Israel, since it is very probable that Arabs from the neighboring countries will come to their aid. But our power will be greater, not only because we will be better organized and equipped, but also because behind us stands a force still greater in quantity and quality. This is the reservoir of the millions in the Diaspora. Our entire younger generation of Poland, Romania, America, and other countries will rush to our aid at the outbreak of such a conflict. I pray to God that this does not happen at all. Nevertheless the Jewish state will not rely only on the Jews living in it, but on the Jewish people living in every corner of the world: the many millions who are eager and obliged [emphasis original] to settle in Palestine. There are notmillions of Arabs who are compelled or willi ng to settle in Palestine. Of course it is likely that Arab adventurers and gangs will come from Syria or Iraq or other Arab countries, but these can be no match for the tens and hundreds of thousands of young Jews to whom Eretz Israel is not merely an emotional issue, but one that is in equal measure both personal and national.

For this reason I attach enormous importa nce to the conquest of the sea and the construction of a Jewish harbor and a Jewish fleet. The sea is the bridge between the Jews of this country and the Jewish Diaspora – the millions of Jews in different parts of the world. We must create the conditions that will enable us in times of necessity to bring into the country inour own ships manned by our own seamen, tens of thousands of young men. Meanwhile we must prepare these young men while they are still in the Diaspora for whatever task awaits them here.

I am confident that the establishment of a Jewish state, even if it is only in a part of the country, will enable us to carry out this task. Once a state is established, we shall have control over the Eretz Israeli sea. Our activities in the sea will then include astonishing achievements.

Because of all the above, I feel no conflict between my mind and emotions. Both declare to me: A Jewish state must be established immediately, even if it is only in part of the country. The rest will follow in the course of time. A Jewish state will come.

My warm greetings [Hebrew:Shalom Rav].

When do you return to Kadoorie [agricultural school]? Write to me. Show this letter to your mother and
sisters.

Sincerely,

Your father

(Source / 14.05.2013)

7 million Palestinian refugees since Palestinian Nakba

 

RAMALLAH, (PIC)– More than 7 million Palestinian refugees, uprooted from their homes and lands since the Palestinian Nakba (the usurpation of Palestine), are still hoping to return to their homeland, and reject the notion of land swaps. Many of the Palestinian families who fled Palestine still hold keys to their homes after being forced to leave their lands and homes at gunpoint. MP Mona Mansour stressed the right of return for all Palestinian refugees who were forcibly expelled from their historical lands. She confirmed her total rejection of the notion of land swaps, warning of its seriousness on the Palestinian cause. Dr Abdel Sattar Qassem Professor of Political studies confirmed that Nakba anniversary highlights the Palestinian refugees’ adherence to their right of return despite their difficult living conditions in refugee camps. The refugee Ahmed Abu Saada from Jalazoun refugee camp confirmed that the Palestinian right of return will never be compromised. Resistance is the only reliable option to return to our homeland, he stressed. The Palestinian expert in settlements affairs Khalil Tufkaji expressed his rejection to the idea of land swaps, saying that it legalizes the Israeli settlement and prevents the territorial contiguity of the Palestinian desired state. The Palestinian right of return is a sacred right inherited by successive generations and no one is entitled to compromise it, the refugee, Hamdan Khamis from the Askar refugee camp east of Nablus said. In 1948, nearly 714 thousand Palestinians were forcibly displaced from the homes and ended up in various internal and external refugee camps. Millions of refugees are still displaced in various refugee camps as Israel continues to deny their internationally-guaranteed Right of Return to their homes. (Source / 13.05.2013)