Thousands of Palestinians marched in northern Israel on Tuesday to demand the right of refugees to return and to commemorate the Palestinians fleeing or being forced to flee during the 1948 war.
Many of the nearly 3,000 people also called for an end to the war in Gaza as they participated in the march near the city of Haifa to commemorate the “Nakba,” when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled in the 1948 war that accompanied the establishment of Israel.
Many of them raised Palestinian flags and wore the Palestinian keffiyeh in the annual Right of Return march, in a rare Palestinian protest that was allowed to be held in Israel as the war raged in the Gaza Strip.
Many of them were carrying water bottles, and some were pushing strollers as they walked on a dirt road. Others called for the liberation of Palestinians from the Israeli occupation.
Fidaa Shehadeh, coordinator of the Women Against Weapons Coalition and a former member of the Lod Municipal Council, said, “This actually means that the refugees so far are refugees in other countries and in refugee camps after which they exist, and of course this is part of liberation and return, not just occupation, but every refugee is able to return to his homeland and live and be.” He is in the place he wants to be, and this is the only march in the year that talks about the right of return, because in the rest of the year it is as if it is a right. Everyone is trying to remove it from the table and does not talk about it. So we return in this march to remember and confirm that if return is achieved, it must be achieved in the end.”
About 700,000 Palestinians left their homes or were forced to flee in the 1948 war. Fida Shehadeh said her family was forcibly displaced from the coastal village of Majdal Ashkelon, with some fleeing to the city of Lod in what later became Israel and others to Gaza. She considered herself internally displaced.
Fidaa Shehadeh added that her uncles, aunts, uncles, and maternal uncles in Gaza, whom she said she was last able to visit in 2008 with Israeli approval, have now been displaced again while trying to escape the Israeli bombing.
She said they don’t know if or when they will be able to return to their homes.
She explained that she travels to the West Bank almost weekly to ship electronic SIM cards to her relatives in Gaza so that they can stay in touch.
She said that she sometimes waits days until she receives a message saying “Good morning,” and that is how they know that the person who sent it is still alive.
Gaza health officials say more than 35,000 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza war. Israel began its military campaign in Gaza after an attack by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on southern Israel on October 7, which, according to Israeli statistics, led to the killing of 1,200 people and the kidnapping of 253 others.