Maybe the Palestinian unity demonstrations on March 15 were a false start, but public protests to mark the Nakba appear to have something of the Arab Spring about them. Peaceful demonstrators assembled at Qalandia, al-Ma’asara, Nablus, Bil’in and many other places across the West Bank, Gaza and in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Syria at the borders with Israel’s defacto state, as well as in Jaffa. The demonstrations have been met with repression and violence from Israeli military, sometimes supplemented by the private security guards of settlements.
In Israel, the Nakba is now the subject of a draconian law outlawing it’s commemoration by publicly-funded bodies, including schools attended by Israel’s Palestinian citizens. Zochrot (“Remembering”) protested the law by commemorating the Nakba in Tel Aviv.
