AS Israel celebrated the 65th anniversary of its creation, several hundred pro-Palestinian protesters have marched down Sydney’s George Street to commemorate the day.
About 350 protesters and activists succeeded in shutting down half of Sydney’s main thoroughfare on Wednesday night as they marched in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
“Tonight we’re commemorating the day in 1948 that Israel was brought into being by illegitimate means and displaced over 700,000 Palestinians and ethnically cleansed over 450 Palestinian villages,” organiser Lutfi Zayed told AAP.
Almost three quarters of the Palestinian population were dispossessed, and there are now 4.3 million Palestinian refugees in camps within Gaza as well across the Middle East in Lebanon and Jordan, organisers said.
Former US President Harry Truman recognised the state of Israel on May 15, 1948, and Palestinians refer to that day as the Nakba or “the catastrophe”.
Zayed said the Nakba was “an ongoing process of genocide and of the construction of an apartheid state”.
Full story in The Australian (AAP)