Palestinians rally at historic villages in Israel
Thousands of people took part on Tuesday in an annual march through the ruins of villages that Palestinians were expelled from during the 1948 war that led to Israel's creation. Wrapped in keffiyeh scarves and waving Palestinian flags, men and women rallied through the abandoned villages of Al-Kassayer and Al-Husha – many holding signs with the names of dozens of other demolished villages their families were displaced from. "Your Independence Day is our catastrophe," reads the rallying slogan for the protest that took place as Israelis celebrated the 76th anniversary of the proclamation of the State of Israel. The protest this year was taking place against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Gaza, where fighting between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas has displaced the majority of the population, according to the United Nations. Among those marching on Tuesday was 88-year-old Abdul Rahman al-Sabah. He described how members of the Haganah, a Zionist paramilitary group, forced his family out of Al-Kassayer, near the northern city of Haifa, when he was a child. They "blew up our village, Al-Kassayer, and the village of Al-Husha so that we would not return to them, and they planted mines," he said, his eyes glistening with tears. The family was displaced to the nearby town of Shefa-Amr. "But we continued (going back), my mother and I, and groups from the village, because it was harvest season, and we wanted to live and eat," he said. "We had nothing, and whoever was caught by the Israelis was imprisoned." Palestinians remember this as the "Nakba", or catastrophe, when around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes during the war that led to the creation of Israel. The descendants of the 160,000 Palestinians who managed to remain in what became Israel presently number about 1.4 million, around 20 percent of Israel's population. (AFP)