PALESTINIANS in the Gaza Strip commemorated on Sunday the anniversary of the 1967 Israeli invasion and occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights that began on June 5, a day that Palestinians refer to as the Naksa, meaning setback.
Demonstrators at the Naksa Day rally waved Palestinian flags as they marched from the Unknown Soldier Square in central Gaza City to the UNRWA headquarters, condemning Israel for its continued crimes against Palestinians.
Hamas official Ismail Radwan called for achieving national reconciliation in accordance with the Cairo agreement, referring to the 2012 accords between Fatah, Hamas, and the Palestinian National Council to form an interim government in preparation for national elections, which haven’t been held since 2006.
Radwan warned Palestinian factions against pinning their hopes on international negotiation efforts that promise ‘illusions’ that ‘will not achieve anything,’ in an allusion to the French initiative to hold a multilateral peace conference, preliminary talks for which kicked off in Paris on Friday.
Hamas, along with other Palestinian factions, released a joint statement on Friday slamming the PLO-supported initiative as a ‘dangerous violation against agreed-upon national rights, especially the right of return’.
Radwan reiterated at the rally that the right of return was a ‘sacred right that is not negotiable’. He added that Israeli leaders must be presented to the International Criminal Court and prosecuted for the war crimes they committed.
Talal Abu Tharifeh, Palestinian lawmaker and member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) – a group that endorsed Hamas’ joint statement – called upon the Palestinian leadership to drop the French initiative, slamming the international effort as a ‘waste of time’.
Abu Tharifeh stressed that Palestinians were determined to continue resisting until all Palestinian lands occupied by Israel were returned. The 1967 war resulted in the flight of around 300,000 Palestinians from their homes, as well as thousands of Syrians from the Golan Heights.
Palestinians believe the war completed the Israeli occupation of historic Palestine that began with the Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’ of 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes in what became Israel.
As thousands of Israelis celebrated the anniversary of the establishment of Israeli control over Jerusalem in 1967 on Sunday, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah warned of the dangerous ramifications of Israeli actions in occupied East Jerusalem and across the Palestinian territory.
His statements came as hundreds of right-wing Israelis toured the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, with three Israelis evacuated and another taken in for questioning, while two Palestinian women were detained. Meanwhile, thousands more Israelis took part in the ‘Jerusalem Day’ celebrations elsewhere in occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City.
Extremist Israeli settlers on Saturday night attempted to set fire to a Palestinian-owned store in the Old City neighbourhood in Jerusalem, according to locals.
Local Palestinian youths were able to extinguish the blaze made by Israeli extremists in the Palestinian-owned store. Palestinian government spokesperson Yousif Mahmoud said the prime minister had reiterated that the whole region would not have peace, security, or stability without regaining control of Jerusalem, adding that no Palestinian would agree to a solution that did not include the whole of East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Mahmoud added that the ‘deceptive’ naming of the celebrations in the Old City as ‘Jerusalem Day’ would not succeed in concealing the truth of the painful memory, which he described as a ‘disastrous’ occupation of ‘our eternal capital’.
He said the Palestinian government viewed the heightened security enforcement by Israeli police on Sunday and their facilitation of the thousands of Israelis touring the Old City as a ‘re-occupation’ of Jerusalem.
Mahmoud insisted that the Israeli government’s continuing isolation of East Jerusalem, its attempt to erase Jerusalem’s Islamic identity and Arabic name (al-Quds), in addition to the daily incursions into the city’s holy sites, paved the way ‘for a dangerous circle of violence’ that would spread throughout the entire region.
Israeli occupation forces on Sunday detained 18 Palestinians from across the Wet Bank districts, including Jerusalem, as well as blocked Bethlehem’s main checkpoint, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).
In the Hebron area, forces detained nine Palestinians after raiding and searching their homes. They were identified as Jawwad Shalaldeh, Mohammad Zaidat, 73, and his son Mousa, 50, in addition to Ali Zaidat, Mohaib al-Nejmi, Mo’ayyad Abu Sel, Abdallah al-Qasas, Abdel-Basit Ghaith, and Ammar Sherbati, 26. They further detained 60-year-old Younis al-Kawazbeh, the father of Ahmad who was shot dead by Israeli forces’ fire in early January 2016, following a stabbing attack that led to the injury of an Israeli soldier.
In Bethlehem, forces detained Mohannad Abu Aqer, 36, after raiding and searching his home in the Village of Nahalin to the west, in addition to Sulaiman al-Horoub. Forces further blocked the Israeli military checkpoint of al-Container to the northeast of Bethlehem from both directions, thoroughly inspecting Palestinian registered vehicles and causing a traffic jam.
In Tubas, Israeli soldiers detained two youths identified as Saher Daraghmeh, and ex-detainee Ashraf Daraghmeh, after raiding and searching their families’ homes. In Ramallah’s village of Dura al-Qare, forces detained an ex-detainee identified as Awadallah Hassan, 19, after raiding and searching his home.
In Jerusalem, Israeli police detained local man Issa Derbas, an ex-detainee, in addition to two others from the town of Biddu, near Jerusalem. They were identified as Iyad Khdour, Zohair Humaidan. The PPS noted that seven Palestinians had been detained by Israeli forces in the past two days.
• A series of rallies was staged on Saturday by a consortium of Pro-Palestine organisations and forums across Europe to push for lifting the Israeli siege on Gaza. The Palestinian Forum in Denmark and the Palestinian Youth Assembly in Denmark staged a sit-in in the streets of Aarhus city.
The rally-goers lifted banners denouncing the Israeli siege on Gaza and slamming the silence maintained by the international community as regards the tragic situation endured by Gazans.
The rallies fell in line with ongoing celebrations of the Global Week to Break the Siege on Gaza organised by the International and European Campaign to lift the siege.
Danish passers-by voiced their solidarity with the Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip and called for lifting the siege.
A similar event was staged on Saturday by the Palestinian Assembly in Germany in the capital Berlin to push for breaking the siege. A series of pro-Gaza events was also held in the French city of Lyon and in Italy, calling for restoring Gazans’ free movement and alleviating the tragedy endured by civilians in the besieged coastal enclave.
