For the first time, the UN officially commemorated the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from what is now Israel on the 75th anniversary of their exodus — an action stemming from the UN’s partition of British-ruled Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas headlined yesterday’s UN commemoration of what Palestinians call the “Nakba” or “catastrophe.”
Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour called the UN observance “historic” and significant because the UN General Assembly played a key role in the partition of Palestine.
Photo: Reuters
“It’s acknowledging the responsibility of the UN of not being able to resolve this catastrophe for the Palestinian people for 75 years,” Mansour told a group of UN reporters recently.
“The catastrophe to the Palestinian people is still ongoing,” he added.
Palestinians still do not have an independent state, and they do not have the right to return to their homes as called for in a General Assembly resolution adopted in December 1948.
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan condemned the commemoration, calling it an “abominable event” and a “blatant attempt to distort history.”
He said that those who attend would be condoning antisemitism and giving a green light to Palestinians “to continue exploiting international organs to promote their libelous narrative.”
The General Assembly, which had 57 member nations in 1947, approved the resolution dividing Palestine by a vote of 33-13 with 10 abstentions. The Jewish side accepted the UN partition plan, and after the British mandate expired in 1948, Israel declared its independence.
Arabs rejected the plan and neighboring Arab countries launched a war against the Jewish state.
The Nakba commemorates the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes in 1948.
The fate of these refugees and their descendants — estimated at more than 5 million across the Middle East — remains a major disputed issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel rejects demands for a mass return of refugees to long-lost homes, saying that it would threaten the country’s Jewish character.
As the 75th anniversary approached, the now 193-member General Assembly approved a resolution on Nov. 30 last year by a vote of 90-30 with 47 abstentions requesting that the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People organize a high-level event on May 15 to commemorate the Nakba.
The US was among the countries that joined Israel in voting against the resolution, and the US Mission to the UN said no US diplomats would be attending yesterday’s commemoration.
Explaining why a UN commemoration took so long, Mansour said on Friday that Palestinians have moved cautiously at the UN since the General Assembly raised their status in 2012 from a non-member observer to a non-member observer state.
The Nakba commemoration comes as Israeli-Palestinian fighting has intensified and protests over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government and its plan to overhaul Israel’s judiciary show no sign of abating. Israel’s polarization and the Netanyahu government’s extremist positions have also sparked growing international concern.
Mansour on Friday said that Palestinian refugees “are being forcibly removed from their homes and forcibly transferred by Israel at an unprecedented rate,” reminiscent of 1948.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
RSS