BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights

29 November 2007

Launch of the "Nakba-60 Campaign" - a Global Campaign for the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People

"We had a country, but they they came and stole our country", members of the old generation of Palestinian refugees from towns and villages in what is now Israel summarize what happened between 1947 - 1949, and they call it the "Nakba" (catastrophe). "Look, they are stealing our country", say Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank today. They point at Israel's Wall, roads, military checkpoints and Jewish colonies which deprive them of access to some 40 percent of the land and cause more displacement. "This is our Nakba; the Nakba is ongoing", they say.

Today, 60 years after the UN Partition Plan, Palestinians and people of conscience worldwide launch a year-long campaign of public awareness-raising and education about the Nakba and Israel's discriminatory Apartheid-like regime over the Palestinian people in the 1967 OPT, Israel and in exile.