As a sign of continued progress towards “unity” Palestinian Authority officials announced that Hamas terrorists will march together with Fatah to mark the ‘Nakba.”
It is the first time in nearly ten years the two factions will coordinate and appear together at events that lament the “catastrophe” of the rebirth of the State of Israel.
Marches are expected in all Palestinian Authority-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria, and the flags of the Hamas terrorist organization will fly freely together with those of the PA.
This is the first time Hamas will be legally allowed to rally supporters to “the cause” in Judea and Samaria since it seized control of Gaza, ousting the Fatah faction led by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. That came in June 2007 at the end of a months-long bloody militia war between the two groups that followed PA elections in January 2006, when Hamas was swept to a landslide victory in the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Leftist Israeli and foreign activists around Israel have been rallying all week and last week to support the PA and mark the approach of ‘Nakba Day’ — including at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and at Tel Aviv University as well.
The ‘nakba’ an Arabic word for disaster or catastrophe, is used in this context to refer to the rebirth of the State of Israel 66 years ago. It is marked on May 15 each year by anti-Zionist groups in Israel and around the world, as well as in the PA-controlled territories.
One of the themes of the day is the tragedy of the endless, eternal stream of refugees that resulted from the Arab war declared against the newborn Jewish State.
War in Israel is a fight for survival, and our founders and defenders were sometimes forced to choose whose lives to protect — as the IDF does with the civilians that Hamas terrorists use as human shields in their wars with Israel today. Sometimes Arabs were driven from their homes in what quickly became a war zone.
During the conflict, official statistics report that most of the 700,000 Arab residents who ultimately became refugees from the war fled their homes to avoid the battle, believing they could return with their victorious Arab brethren in a few days. Others were driven out by soldiers who perceived a security threat.
Those numbers, however, have now grown to more than five million with the passage of generations. Nearly all are still cooped up in “refugee camps” in neighboring Arab nations by their “brethren” who refuse to accept them as citizens, to this very day. In this way they have become a weapon against Israel for the quiet, decades-long ongoing war of attrition still conducted today by some of its Arab neighbors, albeit through proxy terror groups, and via PA rage.
The key often seen on posters brandished at demonstrations by the angry and despairing Arab protesters symbolizes the homes their ancestors lost in the 1948 War of Independence. It is important to emphasize, however, that not every Arab resident abandoned their home in Israel. Those who did not – and there were many – enjoy a quality of life and civil rights that are clearly the best to be had in the Middle East.