right of return

On May 15, thousands of Palestinians in Occupied Palestine and throughout the ‘shatat’, or diaspora, participated in the commemoration of Nakba Day, the one event that unites all Palestinians, regardless of their political differences or backgrounds.
For years, social media has added a whole new stratum to this process of commemoration. #Nakba72, along with #NakbaDay and #Nakba, have all trended on Twitter for days. Facebook was inundated with countless stories, videos, images, and statements, written by Palestinians, or in global support of the Palestinian people.

An encounter between a Jewish couple in Ijzim, Israel (south of Haifa) the the displaced Palestinians in whose house that couple resides, who are denied return to their village and property. “On the anniversary of the Nakba … a tour through depopulated Palestinian villages within Israel … and rare meetings between the owners of the original Palestinian homes and their[Read More...]

‘Heinous racism,’ is how the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor described a recent decision by Lebanese authorities to bar Palestinian refugee expats from returning to Lebanon.

Amman, Jordan — Abna’a Gaza (the Children of Gaza) is a status given to Palestinian refugees who fled from the Gaza Strip to Jordan in 1967. They fled during the 1967 war and consequent Israeli occupation of Gaza. Today, over five decades later, these Palestinians who originally fled to Gaza from their homes in greater Palestine in 1948 number 150,000. They remain mostly in camps, unable to leave, unable to work except for menial labor, with no access to healthcare and with no formal national identity.
 

SteveSalaita.com — With the Democratic primary in full swing, the outlines of public debate are pretty much entrenched.  Common wisdom on the left says that all of the candidates are bad on Palestine except for Bernie Sanders.  Despite some problems, pundits declare, Sanders is still the best.  Is the statement true, though, or is it a convenient truism?

A precious moment has been squandered, as Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, had the chance to right a historical wrong, by reinstating Palestinian national priorities at the United Nations Security Council on February 11, through a political discourse that is completely independent from Washington and its allies.

After several postponements, US President, Donald Trump, has finally revealed the details of his Middle East plan, dubbed ‘Deal of the Century’, in a press conference in Washington on January 28.

The Trump “Vision for Peace” will never be implemented – and not because the Palestinians reject it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s enthusiastic public embrace of the plan belies the fact that the Israeli right detest it too.
The headlines are that, with US blessing, Israel’s dream is about to be realised: it will be able to annex its dozens of illegal settlements in the West Bank and the vast agricultural basin of the Jordan Valley. In return, the Palestinians can have a state on 15 per cent of their homeland.

Now that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has revealed the details of the so-called Deal of the Century, the only appropriate response is a bold, well-defined plan which offers a real solution to the ongoing colonization of Palestine. To be viable, the alternative plan will need to include at least three vital elements: A total and unequivocal rejection of Zionism and the State of Israel, a plan by which Palestine will transition from an apartheid state to a democratic country and immediate implementation of the Palestinian right of return. 
 

Much of Donald Trump’s long-trailed “deal of the century” came as no surprise. Over the past 18 months, Israeli officials had leaked many of its details.
The so-called Vision for Peace unveiled on Tuesday simply confirmed that the US government has publicly adopted the long-running consensus in Israel: that it is entitled to keep permanently the swaths of territory it seized illegally over the past half-century that deny the Palestinians any hope of a state.