The UN will commemorate Nakba Day, which marks the creation of the state of Israel in historical Palestine, for the first time in 2023.

“The UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People [CEIRPP] will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba at UN Headquarters in New York,” the UN said

“For the first time in the history of the UN, this anniversary will be commemorated pursuant to the mandate by the General Assembly.”

“Commemorations… will bring to life the Palestinian journey and will aim at creating an immersive experience of the Nakba through live music, photos, videos, and personal testimonies.”

This year marks 75 years of Nakba, or catastrophe, when nearly 800,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes by then Zionist Israeli paramilitaries in 1948 and onward.

“Commemorating the Nakba must be at the top of our priorities in order to preserve our narrative, which we must adhere to and convey to the whole world,” the Palestinian WAFA news agency quoted Palestine’s President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday as saying.

Abbas urged all Palestinians to commemorate the Palestinian tragedy of 1948 “to confront all lies and false narratives that attempt to distort history and facts.”

He said that Palestinians should commemorate this tragedy because “it is the first the global community doesn’t deny it.”

“On these blessed days, we call on all our people to stand together to face the challenges facing our cause, our land and our sanctities, and to focus our compass towards confronting the occupation and getting rid of it,” he added.

Annual reminder

Nakba, Arabic for Catastrophe, resulted from the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948.

Following the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced out of their homes and areas, paving the way for the establishment of Israel.

It is observed annually by Palestinians and human rights advocates across the world.

Arabs in general and Palestinians in specific often mark May 15 as a reminder of their collective suffering, their ancestral home, the continued occupation of the West Bank and the blockaded Gaza.

Palestinians legally hold the “right of return” to their own lands, which are now considered Israeli territory, according to the UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of 1948.

Millions of Nakba survivors are living with their descendants in refugee camps in blockaded Gaza, occupied West Bank and other neighbouring countries.

UN General Assembly passes resolution commemorating Nakba Day

Recalled that in December 2022, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to mark Nakba Day, which commemorates the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their lands in 1948 when Israel was established.

90 states voted in favour of the resolution while 30, including the US, the UK, Germany and Canada voted against, with 47 abstaining.

The resolution was sponsored by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the latter of which signed a normalisation deal with Israel in 2020 which was widely condemned by Palestinians as a betrayal of their cause.

Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour praised the resolution.

“Today, this General Assembly will finally acknowledge the historical injustice that befell the Palestinian people, adopting a resolution that decides to commemorate in this General Assembly Hall the 75th anniversary of the Nakba,” he said.

“Our people deserve recognition of their plight, justice for the victims, reparation for their loss and fulfilment of their rights.”

The resolution calls for the Nakba, which falls on May 15th every year, to be commemorated in the General Assembly in 2023. It also calls for the publication of archives and testimonies related to it.

In 1947, the UN General Assembly voted in favour of a resolution partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. This was a key event in the lead up to the Nakba and the dispossession of the Palestinian people.

Palestinians and Arab states strongly rejected the resolution at the time because it gave most of Palestine to a proposed Jewish state when Palestinian Arabs were a majority of the population.

“Seventy five years ago, a very different General Assembly adopted a resolution partitioning Palestine without ever consulting the people of Palestine,” Mansour said, pointing out that Israel was still occupying Palestinian land and dispossessing Palestinians.

He warned that the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict was reaching “the end of the road”.

“Either the international community summons the will to act decisively or it will let peace die passively,” he added.

However, Israeli UN representative Gilad Erdan condemned the General Assembly, saying it had voted in favour of what he called a “false” narrative of the Nakba.

“By supporting resolutions that single out, condemn and vilify Israel, you are telling the Palestinians that their path of incitement and terror-funding truly pays off,” he said.