From the Liveblog of
Monday, May 15, 2023
Abbas urges UN to establish annual event marking the Palestinian ‘Nakba’
Luke Tress is a JTA reporter and a former editor and reporter in New York for The Times of Israel.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas calls on the United Nations to establish an annual event with a UN resolution to commemorate the Nakba, “considering the 15th of May of every year, an international day to commemorate the Palestinian plight which is a plight for humanity as a whole.”
Speaking at a UN event marking the “catastrophe” of Israel, Abbas also says the Palestinians are building a “commemoration monument” to the Nakba.
He says Israel committed “more than 50 massacres” in 1948, demolished over 530 Palestinian villages and displaced 957,000 refugees.
He says the Israeli government is calling for a “new Nakba” against the Palestinians.
“[Israeli ministers Itamar] Ben Gvir and [Bezalel] Smotrich are calling for the expelling of Palestinians out of their homes and demolishing their homes and displacing them, which the Israeli government itself is doing led by who? It is led by [Benjamin] Netanyahu.”
“Netanyahu and other and even worse people, Smotrich and Ben Gvir, this is what they’re calling for. Some people are calling for massacring Palestinians and this is what happened in Huwara,” Abbas claims.
“When things happened in Huwara, Ben Gvir said: ‘Why didn’t you massacre them?’ So what happened in Huwara, the killing and burning of houses and properties by terrorist settler gangs, happened under the protection of Israeli army,” Abbas says.
Ben Gvir never made such a remark after settlers rampaged earlier this year through the West Bank village, burning cars and homes. One man died at the time under unclear circumstances.
