Thousands of Palestinians demand right of return in Ramallah demonstration

Date: 15 / 05 / 2008 Time: 17:27
Ramallah – Ma’an –

Thousands of Palestinians converged in the center of the West Bank city of Ramallah under the midday sun on Thursday for a demonstration to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba and to demand the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in what is now Israel.

By United Nations figures, more than 700,000 Palestinians were displaced in the fighting that resulted in the creation of the state of Israel. Today, millions of refugees and their descendants now live in camps throughout the Middle East.

The demonstrators first gathered at a mock refugee camp, dubbed “Awda” (“Return”) camp, set up across the street from the Muqata'a, the Palestinian presidential compound and the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority. The demonstration then moved to the central square, Al-Manara.

A half-hour drive away, on the other side of Israel’s concrete separation wall and the forbidding Qalandia checkpoint, US President George W. Bush was in Jerusalem for festivities marking the 60th anniversary of Israel’s declaration of independence.

A press release sent to media before the demonstration predicted “the largest demonstration in the West Bank since the outbreak of the Second Intifada.”

Jamal Juma’, coordinator of the Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign and organizer with the National Committee to Commemorate the Nakba said, “The enthusiastic mobilization in the last week among Palestinians all over their homeland and in the Diaspora has shown that 60 years of ongoing Nakba, massacres, assaults and repression have not been able to subdue the Palestinian call for their rights. Ben Gurion’s expectation that ‘the old will die off and the young will forget’ has been proven wrong.”

Students from nearby Bir Zeit university appeared in force. Palestinians from all over the West Bank braved long waits at military checkpoints to attend the demonstration. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ televised address was piped to the assembled crowd through a loudspeaker.

Khamis Al-Jamal, a Bank of Palestine employee, traveled three hours from the city of Hebron to attend the demonstration. “I came to share the memory and remember the Nakba and 1948. It is a duty for all Palestinians to share in this memory,” he said. “We have a right to go back to our land. We have the keys,” he added.

Asked whether he thought President Abbas’ plans to negotiate a two-state agreement with Israel would result in the refugees’ return, Al-Jamal was pessimistic: “Abu Mazen [Abbas] has nothing to do. He has tried to make peace and solve the refugee problem, but he cannot make this decision; the decision will be made by Israel and America. He doesn’t have the power; the Palestinians don’t have the power and I think all the Arabs don’t have the power.”

Mahmoud Jafar, an information technology specialist from Bethlehem, also expressed doubts about the probability that refugees will return to their homes: “UN resolutions state that the refugees should return, but these resolutions were unfulfilled for 60 years. … this will happen when there is a final agreement. I am peaceful; I want a two-state solution, with Israel pulling back to the 1967 borders. There is a chance for peace, but this chance is decreasing day by day.”

Before the main demonstration in Al-Manara had even ended, young Palestinian boys were gearing up for a confrontation with Israeli soldiers at Qalandia checkpoint. Blocking the Jerusalem-Ramallah road with burning tires, metal dumpsters, and large rocks, the boys then threw stones at the soldiers, who responded with rubber-coated metal bullets and sonic bombs. Israeli military jeeps then forced the youths off the street and into the alleyways of Qalandia refugee camp.

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