Press Releases

For Immediate Release

Sixty years have passed since the Nakba (catastrophe) of our Palestinian people, when Zionist military organizations, and later Israel, implemented a systematic campaign of population transfer that expelled almost one million people, turning two-thirds of the Palestinians into refugees, destroying over 530 towns and villages, the confiscation of our property, and considering even those of us who stayed, as absentees. This process of premeditated and systematic ethnic cleansing continues until this very day through Israel's policies of siege, assassination, and the US/Israeli led campaign to undermine the Palestinian refugees' and Internally Displaced persons' right to return.

On the day of Israel's 'independence', we commemorate the 60^th year of Palestine's Nakba. We, the Internally Displaced, live a stone's throw away from our depopulated towns and villages, left to hear the silence of our mosque minarets and church bells which have been turned into stables, bars and brothels by those that usurped them, while the graves of our ancestors are desecrated crying out to world's conscience to see the truth of what has happened here.

Reiterating our commitment to return to our towns and villages and to accept no other alternative; we call upon the sons and daughters of Palestine, upon our political parties and community organizations, and upon the supporters of justice and human dignity everywhere to actively support and participate in the activities organized by the Association to Defend the Right of the Internally Displaced in in Israel (ADRID) as follows:

First: Organizing visits to the destroyed and depopulated Palestinian towns and villages on the morning of Thursday 8 May;

Second: Participating in the 11^th Annual Return March, 3pm on Thursday 8 May. The March will leave from the western entrance of the city of Nazareth (across from the Masharef gas station), marching towards the depopulated village of Saffuriyya, organized in conjunction with the Saffuriyya Heritage and Return Association and with the support for the Arab Higher Monitoring Committee. We will march to the area of Al-Qastal where the participating Arab and Jewish organizations will deliver speeches followed by artistic and cultural performances.

We call on the sons and daughters of Palestine, as well as progressive Jewish organizations who support the right of return, to actively participate in these activities in support of Palestinian refugees' and Internally Displaced Persons return, and to help us start these events on time, and to respect our request that the flags of political parties not be raised, and to limit slogans and chants to those decided on by the organizers:

-         Yes to the return of refugees and internally displaced to their homes

-         No to the resettlement projects

-         The right of return cannot be substituted or violated

-         There can be no real peace without the return of the refugees and the Internally Displaced to their homes

-         The day of their independence is the day of our catastrophe

-         There can be no substitute for the right of return

For more information, contact:

Suhail Mi'ari (ADRID): +972-54-421-1329; Wakim Wakim(ADRID): +972-52-444-1407