Palestinians mark their 1948 displacement

       
Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in the West Bank and Gaza on Wednesday to mark the 65th anniversary of their mass displacement during the war that followed Israel's founding in 1948.              
Every May 15, Palestinians commemorate the "nakba," or "catastrophe"  the term they use to describe their displacement. Hundreds of thousands fled or were driven out during the fighting.                

The dispute over the fate of those Palestinians and that of their descendants, now numbering several million people, remains at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict.                  

Israel views the Palestinians' return as demographic suicide and expects the displaced and their descendants to be taken in by a future Palestinian state.      

But intermittent Israeli-Palestinian attempts to agree on the terms of such a state have so far failed.                 
Sirens wailed at noon in the West Bank for 65 seconds, the number of years since 1948. Thousands marched in Ramallah from the grave of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to the city center. Many wore black in a sign of mourning, holding Palestinian flags and large keys symbolizing the homes they left behind.
                      
Rallies were also held in other cities across the West Bank and smaller protests were held in Gaza, which has been under control of the militant Hamas group since it ousted Palestinian Fatah forces in 2007. About a thousand marched to the U.N. headquarters in Gaza City.                       

The Israeli military said Palestinian protesters across the West Bank threw rocks at soldiers who responded with tear gas.                

President Mahmoud Abbas addressed his people in a televised speech on Tuesday night, saying the Palestinian cause earned international acceptance last year with the U.N. de facto recognizing a Palestinian state in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.                             


AP