Palestinians mark Nakba in West Bank with protests and mourning
Many villages in the West Bank declared a state of mourning on Saturday, following the killing of at least 11 Palestinian by Israeli forces in the occupied territory a day earlier.
In mosques across various Palestinian cities, loudspeakers sounded sirens for 73 seconds to mark the number of years since the Nakba, or the Catastrophe - the mass displacement of Palestinians leading to the establishment of Israel in 1984.
Large crowds of Palestinians also held funerals for the Palestinians who were killed on Friday in the West Bank in an intense crackdown from Israeli forces.
Later on Saturday, the Israeli military fatally shot a Palestinian near al-Fawwar refugee camp south of Hebron, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Mustafa Barghouti, the General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, told MEE that Israel’s use of force and evictions in the region is part of an “ethnic cleansing” effort.
“What we’re witnessing today is an Israeli attempt to repeat the Nakba, but what surprises Israel is the will of the Palestinian resistance and its ability to confront both by armed resistance in the Gaza Strip and popular resistance in the West Bank,” Barghouti said.