Police have refused Monday, April 28, to grant a permit for this year’s annual March of Return on Israel’s Independence Day, organized by Arab-Palestinians in Israel to commemorate the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” referring to the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and villages during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that established the state. Each year, the march is launched from a site of a Palestinian village destroyed by Israeli forces in 1948.

Annual March of Return on Israel’s Independence Day, May 2024 (Photo: Al-Ittihad)

Police claimed that the permit to hold the event was refused due to their “inability to provide police presence in wartime” necessary for a march expected to be attended by thousands of Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel and their supporters.  The march, which has been held for 30 consecutive years, is aimed at highlighting the internationally recognized right of Palestinians who remain refugees or internally displaced to return to their homes and villages in Israel, a right which is upheld in United Nations Resolution 194.

In addition, the University of Haifa on Monday barred the campus branch of Standing Together from holding public events on campus until the end of the current semester. The move came after some 30 students from the group gathered last week to display images of Gazan children killed in the war. Also on Monday evening, far-right activists attacked dozens of anti-war demonstrators who were honoring children killed during the war in the Gaza Strip in the southern city of Be’er Sheva.