Article74 Magazine

Cultural Revival of the Past Catastrophe - Militant Confrontation of Ongoing Denial of National Rights 

The year marking the 50th anniversary of the Palestinian loss of their homeland was the first year since 1948, in which Palestinian national forces and institutions engaged in a joint effort for organizing memorial activities and rallies around the unfulfilled rights and demands of Palestinian refugees. On May 14 and 15, cultural and protest activities took place wherever Palestinian refugees live today, however the center of activity was in those countries in the Middle East that host large refugee communities, especially Lebanon and Jordan, and in Palestine, mainly in its 1967 occupied territories. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, refugees and non-refugees, demonstrated by means of these two-days of activities - held at the same time in the region and the world -strength, unity, and determination to stand up for their rights, i.e. the right of return and self determination. 

Palestinians in Lebanon held dozens of cultural events, protest rallies and candle-light vigils in the cemeteries of fighters and civilians killed in the decades of Palestinian resistance in Lebanon. Palestinian factions issued statements that denounced Israel’s refusal to allow the refugees to return home and the world’s longstanding neglect of their cause. In the country’s largest refugee camp, Ain al-Hilweh, east of Sidon, the demonstrations were dominated by Fatah. “We negotiate and we fight. There will be no peace in the Middle East before the Palestinian people regain their right to return home to Palestine and to its eternal capital Jerusalem,” said Sultan Abu al-Ainain, the Fatah representative in Lebanon. Five-thousand children staged a silent demonstration, carrying Palestinian flags and cardboard models of the Dome of Rock in Jerusalem. In Beirut, PFLP and DFLP led a sit-in of about 300 students in protest against UNRWA’s cut backs in social, educational and health services and proceeded to demonstrate in the capital’s four camps. The students carryied banners describing the Oslo Accords as a “treaty of treason” and released balloons which said “Palestine is ours” and “We will return”. A statement released by residents of the Baddawi and al-Bared camps, north of Tripoli, urged UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to “step in to bring about the implementation of UN resolutions that guarantee our people the right of self-determination, the return home, and to set up an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.” They also called on Annan to lobby the Lebanese government to drop a decree requesting entry visas from Palestinians who carry Lebanese residency papers and the ban on work permits. (Daily Star, Reuters, 15-5-1998) 

In Jordan, UNRWA employees, most of them Palestinian refugees, stopped work for one hour on Thursday 14 May, commemorating “a homeland lost, a homeland ended by the Zionist project” and called for the implementation of UN resolutions which call for the right of return. UNRWA workers expressed anger at the historic injustice and at the blocked Middle East peace process, which “has delivered little to Palestinians inside the West Bank and Gaza and nothing to those in exile.” Memorials and cultural events were held by Palestinian institutions and UNRWA schools while street demonstrations in the well-policed camps were scarce. (Reuters, 14-5-1998) 

In the 1967 occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Authority dominated the organization of the public rallies commemorating al-Nakba. “The March of the Million” was to serve a two-fold aim, i.e. to demonstrate the unbroken popular unity behind the demand for the full implementation of Palestinian national rights on the one hand, and to prove to the international community - and first of all the United States - that the PA/Fatah has not lost its ability to control popular mobilization in these areas, on the other. Hundreds of thousands actually marched in the streets of the camps and cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on 14 March, many of them were less interested in memorial ceremonies and speeches than in expressing their anger at the ongoing oppression by the Israeli occupation forces. Israeli military checkpoints and settlements bordering Palestinian Areas A thus became the site of battles reminiscent of the days of the Intifada and of the September 1996 clashes. Again, Palestinian civilians were the major victim of this unequal war. In the Gaza Strip, four Palestinians (among them one nurse on duty) were shot dead and 71 left injured by Israeli soldiers using life ammunition and rubber coated metal bullets (Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Gaza, 16 May 1998). One Palestinian was killed in the West Bank town of Ramallah, the number of injured in the West Bank had reached over 100 by May 15, while confrontations and injuries in Hebron continue until today (May 18).