Palestine condemns Israeli occupation, terrorism

Herald Reporter
ON the occasion of the 67th anniversary of the State of Palestine’s Nakbah Day or “Day of Catastrophe”, the Palestinian Organisation through its embassy in Harare issued a strongly worded statement in which it condemned Israel for causing untold suffering among millions of its people.

Nakbah Day is commemorated by Palestinians across the world on May 15 and it refers to the 1948 establishment of Israel that led to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians being displaced from their homeland.

In a statement, the PLO said: “The State of Israel was established by using terrorism and the power of the colonial rule through committing massacres and ethnic cleansing, which led to the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages and the displacement of more than 750 000 Palestinians scattered in refugee camps in Palestine and the neighbouring countries. Today, there are seven million refugees.

“Sixty-seven years on and Israel is still committing heinous massacres and racist war crimes against the Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza, and get away with impunity.”

The Palestinians said, “despite all the effort exerted regionally and internationally to reach peace through negotiations, Israel managed to destroy the hopes for peace by insisting on its racist apartheid policy of building settlements in the occupied Palestinian land and committing war crimes against our people, and its continuous judaisation of Jerusalem and suppression of the Palestinian prisoners and the persistence of the siege of Gaza, violating all the international and humanitarian laws and human rights of the Palestinian people.”

The Palestinians appealed to the international community to put an end to this human tragedy by taking drastic action against Israel:

“It is high time that the international community put an end to this human tragedy by taking brave resolutions and set a time table for Israel to withdraw from the land of the State of Palestine, and put an end to its ugly occupation and injustice that our people are suffering from since sixty seven years ago.

Without this step, the peace in the region will never be achieved and consequently world peace will be always under threat,” reads the statement.

Zimbabwe supports the proposed two-state solution and the co-existence between Palestine and Israel. The position was affirmed in a declaration that was adopted at the close of the Asia-Africa Conference in April in Indonesia where President R.G. Mugabe attended he Summit in his capacity as the African Union chairperson. One of the three documents adopted by the Conference was on the Palestine question.

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip planned to mark “Nakbah Day” yesterday with a series of protests and marches after the Friday prayers.

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