The UN overwhelmingly supports a 75th-anniversary commemoration of the Nakba, the catastrophe in which Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland for the creation of Israel.
The UN General Assembly has approved a resolution to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, a term used to describe the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the lead-up to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
Ninety countries voted in favour of the measure, with 30 voting against it and 47 abstaining.
The resolution was one of five that were voted on in the UN on Thursday related to Israel and Palestine. The UN also voted in favour of renaming a journalism training programme after Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian journalist who was killed by Israeli forces during a raid in the occupied West Bank.
And another adopted resolution called for a “halt to all settlement activities, land confiscation and home demolitions, for the release of prisoners and for an end to arbitrary arrests and detentions”. A final resolution called for Israel to rescind its control over the occupied region of the Golan Heights.
The Nakba resolution includes the organising of a high-level event at the General Assembly on May 15 2023.
The Nakba, “the catastrophe”, is the name Palestinians give to the massacres and forced expulsion they endured at the hand of Zionist militias in 1948.
Entire Palestinian villages were massacred, with Zionist gangs indiscriminately killing unarmed civilians and burying some in mass graves. The Israeli campaign left an estimated 15,000 Palestinians dead and some 750,000 fleeing their homes to live as refugees.