Ethnic cleansing after the guns fell silent, March 1949: The eviction of the residents of the village of Iraq al-Manshiyya, population 2,000, which had been within the borders of the Arab state defined by the 1947 UN Partition Plan of Palestine. This action took place weeks after Israel and Egypt signed their armistice agreement in Rhodes, Greece, under the auspices of the UN, setting the armistice line such that Iraq al-Manshiyya was on the Israeli side. The residents of the village were transferred to what would become known as the Gaza Strip. In 1954, Israel founded the development town of Kiryat Gat that included the site and adjacent agricultural fields of the erased Arab village, totaling some 1,350 hectares of land.

Haaretz: Israel Systematically Hiding Evidence of the Nakba

In an article published in its weekend magazine section on Friday, July 5, the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz revealed that since the start of the last decade, Defense Ministry teams have been scouring archives throughout Israel and removing “sensitive” historic documents. However, among the documents being transferred to secret vaults are not just papers relating…

The memorial to Palestinian writer and activist Ghassan Kanafani in the Muslim cemetery in Acre prior to its removal this week

Memorial to Palestinian Writer in Acre Removed following Thinly-Veiled Threats by Interior Minister

Israel’s Interior Minister Arye Deri has successfully wielded pressure in Acre to rid the seaside city of a recently erected memorial to the Palestinian author and playwright Ghassan Kanafani. Dery’s intervention came only a week after he and the prime minister foiled the appointment of the Palestinian-Arab Communist activist Raja Zaatry as deputy mayor of…