Israeli confidence that Nakba day, marked on 15 May in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel and neighboring Arab countries, would remain under control, has backfired badly.
The Electronic Intifada speaks with Jon Elmer (www.jonelmer.ca), a Canadian independent journalist based in Bethlehem who documented protests in the occupied West Bank today.
As nationalist parties and festivals were held throughout Israel to mark the country’s Independence Day on 10 May, several thousand Palestinians and their supporters held a commemoration of their own in the Galilee, demanding the right to return to their ancestral villages and homes.
Following the February ouster of Egypt’s longstanding President Hosni Mubarak, calls have been circulating in Egypt and throughout the region for a “Third Intifada” to begin 15 May.
The US government has frozen the bank accounts belonging to Hatem Abudayyeh, a Palestinian community organizer and director of a social service organization serving the Arab community in Chicago, and his wife, Naima.
Grassroots activist Bassem Tamimi was arrested at his West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on 25 March and has been in detention ever since. Last January, The Electronic Intifada contributor Max Blumenthal interviewed Tamimi about the village’s popular struggle against the occupation, of which he and his wife and brother have been central figures.
Since being interviewed by The Electronic Intifada in 2009, Auschwitz survivor Hajo Meyer has toured numerous countries to speak about his efforts to combat Zionism and his support for the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom and equality.
The Electronic Intifada contributor Adri Nieuwhof interviewed Mireille Fanon-Mendes France, an activist and daughter of the celebrated anti-colonialist thinker Frantz Fanon, about her involvement in the Palestinian struggle for liberation.
