1.       Nakba is the Arabic word for catastrophe. It is used to describe the Palestinian loss of land and property during the depopulation of Palestine from 1947-1949 and does not refer simply to the declaration of a state of Israel.

As Palestinian leaders prepare to seek UN recognition of statehood in September, there is increasing talk in the US, Israel and elsewhere of disbanding the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the UN Relief and Works Agency, and handing responsibility for Palestinian refugees to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

 

A legal Point of View: Compiled and Written by: Mahmoud Hanfi for the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) and The Palestinian Organization for Human Rights (Shahid). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ratified on the 10th of December 1948. December is also the anniversary of  UN Resolution  194, calling for and protection  the return of Palestinian refugees. The month is also very special for Palestinians as it marks the establishment of UNRWA in 1949. 

UNRWA is Unique in its long standing commitment to one group of refugees, and its contributions to the welfare and human development
for four generations of Palestine refugees.

Ramallah - PNN - UN agency brings back ‘Reliefs’ and ‘Works’ to its full name on its website after Palestinian protests at name change.

Israel’s military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) is the most persistent military occupation on earth. But this 35-year-old occupation is only the second stage in the colonization of the land of Canaan. The first stage, between 1947-1949, generated the largest population of refugees still unsettled since World War Two, with the longest displacement in modern history. Until recently, two competing accounts of this catastrophic event existed.

By Ahmed Moor - Washington insiders are now touting a misguided Obama-dictated plan to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Most recently, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Solarz took to the pages of The Washington Post to float the idea of an imposed peace, which largely undermines non-negotiable historic Palestinian rights. The authors call for the annulment of the Palestinian right of return, and the creation of a "demilitarized Palestinian state."

According to the documents leaked to Al-Jazeera, PA officials agreed to deprive the vast majority refugees of this right to return to their homes in what is now Israel.

At the Bourj el Barajneh refugee camp in southern Beirut, a centre for the elderly serves as an oasis from the overcrowded, filthy conditions outside its metal doors.

 

A Disputed land: The fame of Palestine comes from the over 80 years dispute between its local Arab population and the immigrant Zionist Jews who strove and later managed to establish their own political entity, the “State of Israel”, expelling and depriving the local population. Zionism in brief is a political ideology that believes in the establishment of a “national” home for the Jewish people in Palestine, it works to realize its aim through all possible means, with violence on top of the agenda.