Tomorrow marks the 64th anniversary of Al Nakba, the Palestinian Catastrophe of 1948. It is a day each year that Palestinians remember the calamity which befell them in order for the State of Israel to be born. The original 800,000 or so Palestinians who fled their homes in fear have now multiplied tenfold. There are over five million registered Palestinian refugees living in camps in Palestine and neighboring Arab countries. And every year, they remember their homes, their lands, and their lost lives to which they still long to return.

This monthly memo provides news, updates, commentaries and analysis of events relating to Palestinian refugees around the world, over the past month. It covers stories from Palestine 1948, the Occupied Territories, host countries and Palestinians in diasporas. It also offers news and updates on institutions directly working with Palestinian refugees such as UNRWA.PRC_Monthly_Memo_April_2012.pdf

This monthly memo provides news, updates, commentaries and analysis of events relating to Palestinian refugees around the world, over the past month.

The Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) is proud in presenting its newest publication, authored by its senior researcher, Nasim Ahmed.

This autumn edition of the Journal of Palestinian Refugee Studies (JPRS) was developed from the theme of our Palestine memorial week 2011. Articles included in this edition focus on the ongoing Nakba (literally catastrophe, the term Palestinians used to describe their exile in 1948).

This autumn edition of the Journal of Palestinian Refugee Studies (JPRS) was developed from the theme of our Palestine memorial week 2011. Articles included in this edition focus on the ongoing Nakba (literally catastrophe, the term Palestinians used to describe their exile in 1948). 

The Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine fight for the legitimate rights of the Palestinian People through the medium of international law. For far too long, these rights have been ignored. Not only have the Palestinians suffered injustice as a people and as individuals, something that cries out to Heaven for recognition and compassion, but this denial of justice, this culture of denial that lies behind it, is a source of instability in our world that we cannot afford.

I was looking at the news wires last night and I saw the headline, “Obama condemns violence in Tunisia” and perhaps I’m overly cynical, I assumed it was the violence of the protesters, but actually when I read the news story, it said that “President Obama applauds the courage and dignity of Tunisians that have been protesting, soaring unemployment and corruption” and I think that’s very much to be welcomed and we are all watching with trepidation because many people have been killed but also I think there is hope with the events is Tunisia and I wish that President Obama would use the same language about protests in Silwan or in Bil’in.

The topic that I am supposed to speak on is the strategic outlines of a Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Well, I don’t represent the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and there is no one individual that does or even a few, it really doesn’t have any unified leadership and it either has many leaders or no leaders, take your choice. But what I can do is to give some impressions from my own experience of what actually is happening with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Most of the contributions to the Nakba Conference in January focused on developments in the Occupied Territories and in Israel itself; the continueddenial of the right of Palestinians to self-determination, and the discrimination, expropriation of land and property and displacement that attempt to manipulate the demography of Israel itself as well as in the Occupied Territories, and to extend Israeli territorial control as widely as possible.