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Displaced Palestinians Gather Strength At Nakba Day Rallies
GAZA CITY, May 15 (News Agencies) - In a sea of flags, tens of thousands of Palestinians poured into the streets of the Gaza Strip and West Bank on one of the hottest days, triggering deadly clashes.
At noon, sirens wailed across the Palestinian territories to signal the start of three minutes of silence on the day Arabs call Al-Nakba, or the "catastrophe", caused by the creation of Israel 53 years ago that left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians homeless.
Crowds of Palestinians carried the red-black-green-and-white national flags, while some demonstrators burnt effigies of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, as well as U.S. and Israeli flags.
Marchers swarmed down streets whose walls were painted with scenes of war and homelessness caused by Israel's creation in May 1948, while mourners joined funeral processions for Palestinians killed by the Israeli army the day before.
And more blood was spilt, with four Palestinians killed and more than 120 others injured as clashes erupted across the Palestinian territories.
"We will survive," read one banner carried by schoolchildren from the Gaza Strip, where the bulk of the Arab population comprises refugees.
The children merged with marchers from a range of professional associations, charitable organizations, Islamic groups, as well as university students.
Many clutched portraits of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the symbol of unity for many Palestinians with his black-and-white checkered headscarf shaped like the pre-Israel map of Palestine.
State television broadcast footage of refugees fleeing war five decades ago and played nationalist songs, while a pre-recorded televised address by Arafat said there could be no peace without the right of return for those made homeless after 1948.
In Ramallah, several thousand Palestinians gathered in the city's main square, waving portraits of Arafat, Palestinian flags and banners declaring "Stop the Killing", and "Stop Killing our Children."
The crowds applauded Palestinian scouts carrying a large replica key with "the right to return" inscribed on it in Arabic, English and French.
Arafat, who was absent for Nakba Day, visiting Egypt for talks with close ally President Hosni Mubarak, said in his speech: "It is the right of the refugees and stateless from the diaspora to come back to their state."
More than 3.7 million Palestinian refugees live in camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and neighboring Arab states, and their fate has been one of the core sticking points in the now-moribund peace talks with Israel.
Lawyer Majed Jaffarawi, who joined a mass rally in Gaza City, said he believed Palestinians would one day win their rights.
"Since Oslo [the 1993 self-rule agreement], all of us thought our suffering was on the way to ending," said Jaffarawi, whose farmland, gardens and a factory were razed by Israeli troops during the current uprising.
"Suddenly we find we have gone back 53 years," he said. "For 53 years Israeli governments have tried everything, but until now they haven't tried peace. They will find out that in history, no army can break people's ideas.
"In the near or far future, we will have our liberty."
In a blaze of gunfire blasted in to the air, the flag-draped bodies of two policemen killed in the West Bank on Monday were carried through the streets by hundreds of mourners packed into trucks and buses.
"With our blood and our soul, we will sacrifice ourselves for you, O martyrs," the crowds shouted as they waved flags.
In Gaza City, as blood-drenched wounded from the latest clashes were rushed into Shifa hospital, physician Maawi Hassanein blurted out to a journalist: "I'm very nervous today. I don't feel like a man [with full rights].
"What has happened to my country is a very bad situation. They [the Israelis] want to kill any humanity in our spirit," he said amid the commotion in the emergency room.
Meanwhile, artists expressed their pain by gathering at a wall and putting the finishing touches on paintings depicting war, death, dispossession as well as symbols of peace and hope.
"This is a very painful and hard day," said Hoda Salha, a 27-year-old artist whose family fled Jaffa in 1948.
Wearing a straw hat and long white shirt, Salha painted a woman whose Islamic headcover stretched to the ground like a tent that she said symbolized the dispossession of her people.
Under the flap of the tent was a stand containing keys to homes they lost.
"They still have hope of coming back to their confiscated land," Salha said.
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