By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
May 15, 2005
Arabs throughout the region Sunday marked the 57th Nakba Day, commemorating the "catastrophe" of Israel's rebirth as a sovereign nation in 1948.
Nowhere was the grief more pronounced than among Israel's ostensible "peace" partners, the Arabs of the Palestinian Authority.
Mocking Israel's Holocaust and Memorial Day memorial sirens, the PA sounded its own siren throughout territories under its control Sunday to mourn Israel's "occupation" of what it claims is the Palestinian Arabs' ancient homeland.
Several parades and anti-Israel demonstrations were also expected to take place.
This year's Nakba Day focused on rejecting calls to relinquish the Arabs' "right" to flood the Jewish state with millions of so-called "Palestinian refugees."
According to the PA, there are some five million "Palestinians" living abroad to whom Israel must grant citizenship in return for a final peace agreement.
During the 1948 war to annihilate the nascent Jewish state, Middle East leaders called on local Arabs to temporarily vacate their homes so the combined Arab armies could more easily destroy the Israelis.
Thousands answered that call, and the Arab world now insists it is Israel's responsibility to repatriate them and their descendants.
Israel's armed forces transferred the residents of other Arab villages openly hostile towards their Jewish neighbors, while urging all non-aggressive Arab residents to remain and participate in building the new state.