Youth camp memorializes Al Nakba, cleans cemetery and sees Al Aqsa Mosque, 5 students arrested

16.05.09 - 20:07

Maisa Abu Ghazaleh / PNN exclusive – The Palestinian people are still living with the calamity that befell them 61 years ago.

New pictures of their plight are coming to the foreground particularly in places like Jerusalem where the strategic policy of driving them away is not dissimilar to the creation of the Israeli state. Now in Jerusalem families and entire neighborhoods are handed demolition orders and forced to leave at gunpoint. In 1947 and ’48 there were no orders, but the outcome was the same.

On Saturday the Israeli police arrested five young men and women who took part in a camp called “Jerusalem First” on the occasion of the anniversary of Al Nakba. Their efforts include working with academic organizations and those that care for Islamic sanctities, including cemeteries and mosques.

Camp director Ibrahim Hijazi explained to PNN today that the camp was held in Jerusalem after 61 years of Al Nakba because the city is under a new policy aimed at the expulsion and displacement of the population. Saturday’s program is in response to that and is a “call of duty and conscience for the homeland.”

Some 750 Palestinian students and parents participated in the camp, cleaning up graves and cemeteries, and visiting emptied and overtaken villages within the current Israeli boundaries, among them Deir Yassin and Ein Kerem. Events were also set up for students inside the Al Aqsa Mosque compound.

Hijazi condemned the Israeli obstacles that have prevented the implementation of some camp activities, including the confiscation of the identification of some of the participants followed by the arrest of several youths during their trip into Al Aqsa Mosque.

Chairman of the Southern Wing of the Islamic Movement inside the Green Line, Sheikh Ibrahim Sarsour called for the immediate release of the detained youth while later in the day’s program Palestinian official Masoud Ghaniam denounced the “Israeli Zionist project that is continuing the confiscation of historic Palestine.”

Israeli police arrest students marking Nakba in East Jerusalem

Date: 16 / 05 / 2009 Time: 18:45

[Ma'anImages] Jerusalem – Ma’an – Israeli police forces carried out sweeping arrests of Palestinian university students participating in Nakba commemoration activities in East Jerusalem on Saturday. The students, most from the Al-Qelem Academic Foundation and Al-Aqsa Islamic Society, were marking the annual day of mourning that marked the 61st anniversary of the expulsion of some 750,000 Palestinians following the establishment of Israel. Witnesses said Israeli forces attacked the group of at least 1,000 students, and arrested a number of them without providing an explanation. Nevertheless, organizers continued the activities inside Jerusalem's Old City, including at Al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as other suburbs of East Jerusalem, which Israel illegally annexed in 1967. Khaled Muhana, head of the media department in for the Islamic Movement in Israel and the spokesperson for Al-Aqsa, commented on the arrests, saying that “this act comes within Israel's systematic oppression policy, which demonstrates the cruelty of the Israeli forces when dealing with such issues.” He also noted that “such acts did not stop hundreds of participants from helping in cleaning cemeteries inside Jerusalem and visiting villages surrounding it that were affected by the Nakba,” the Arabic word for Catastrophe.