The Palestinian key is the Palestinian symbol of homes lost in the Nakba, when more than half of the population of Mandatory Palestine were either expelled or fled violence in the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and subsequently denied the right to return. [1] [2] The key is considered part of a hope for return and a claim to the lost properties. [3]
The keys are large and old-fashioned in style.
Enlarged replicas are often found around Palestinian refugee camps, and used at pro-Palestinian demonstrations around the world as collective symbols. [3]
Since 2016, a Palestinian restaurant in Doha, Qatar, holds the Guinness World Record for the world's largest key – 2.7 tonnes and 7.8 x 3 meters. [4] [5]
Palestinian refugees are citizens of Mandatory Palestine, and their descendants, who fled or were expelled from their country, village or house over the course of the 1948 Palestine war and during the 1967 Six-Day War. Most Palestinian refugees live in or near 68 Palestinian refugee camps across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 2019 more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees were registered with the United Nations.
In the 20th century, approximately 900,000 Jews migrated, fled, or were expelled from Muslim-majority countries throughout Africa and Asia, primarily as a consequence of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the establishment of the State of Israel. Large-scale migrations were also organized, sponsored, and facilitated by Zionist organizations such as Mossad LeAliyah Bet, the Jewish Agency, and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. The mass movement mainly transpired from 1948 to the early 1970s, with one final exodus of Iranian Jews occurring shortly after the Islamic Revolution in 1979–1980. An estimated 650,000 (72%) of these Jews resettled in Israel.
A lock is a mechanical or electronic fastening device that is released by a physical object, by supplying secret information, by a combination thereof, or it may only be able to be opened from one side, such as a door chain.
The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 is a resolution adopted near the end of the 1947–1949 Palestine war. The Resolution defines principles for reaching a final settlement and returning Palestine refugees to their homes. Article 11 of the resolution resolves that
refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.
The Palestinian right of return is the political position or principle that Palestinian refugees, both first-generation refugees and their descendants, have a right to return and a right to the property they themselves or their forebears left behind or were forced to leave in what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories during the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and the 1967 Six-Day War.
The Naksa was the displacement of around 280,000 to 325,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, when the territories were captured by Israel in the Six-Day War. A number of Palestinian villages were destroyed by the Israeli military such as Imwas, Yalo, Bayt Nuba, Beit Awwa, and Al-Jiftlik, among others.
Palestinian art is a term used to refer to artwork either originating from historic Palestine, as well as paintings, posters, installation art, costumes, and handcrafts produced by Palestinian artists in modern and contemproary times.
Muhammad Nimr al-Hawari was a Nazareth-born Palestinian who studied law in Jerusalem, graduating in 1939. Al-Hawari served in the British Mandate administration as chief interpreter in the district court of Jaffa and chairman of the Association of Government second-division officers. He was transferred to Haifa where he resigned his government position in 1942. On his resignation, he returned to practicing law in Jaffa. Al-Hawari started his career as a devoted follower of Amin al-Husseini but broke with the influential Husseini family in the early 1940s. Muhammad Nimr Al-Hawari, during the termination of the British mandate, formed and commanded al-Najjada, a paramilitary armed movement. Al-Hawari was in command of the militia in the defence of Jaffa until he fled in the mass exodus of Palestinians in late December 1947. Al-Hawari fled from Jaffa to Ramallah in December 1947. Al-Hawari together with ‘Aziz Shihada a lawyer from Ramallah opened an office in the West Bank for refugee affairs. Hawari returned to Palestine and years later became judge in the District Court of Nazareth.
Salman Abu Sitta is a Palestinian researcher. Abu Sitta, who was expelled from Palestine as a child in 1948, has dedicated his life to the Palestinian cause and is engaged in public debates with Israeli peace activists. Abu Sitta is the founder and President of Palestine Land Society in London, dedicated to the documentation of Palestine’s land and People.
In July 1948, during the 1948 Palestine war, the Palestinian towns of Lydda and Ramle were captured by the Israeli Defense Forces and their residents were violently expelled. The expulsions occurred as part of the broader 1948 Palestinian expulsions and the Nakba. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in mutiple mass killings, including the Lydda massacre and the Lydda Death March. The two Arab towns, lying outside the area designated for a Jewish state in the UN Partition Plan of 1947, and inside the area set aside for an Arab state in Palestine, were subsequently incorporated into the new State of Israel and repopulated with Jewish immigrants. The towns today have the Hebrew names of Lod and Ramla.
Zochrot is an Israeli nonprofit organization founded in 2002. Based in Tel Aviv, its aim is to promote awareness of the Palestinian Nakba ("Catastrophe"), including the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. The group was co-founded by Eitan Bronstein and Norma Musih, and its current director is Rachel Beitarie. Its current slogan is "From Nakba to Return".
In the 1948 Palestine war, more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of Mandatory Palestine's predominantly Arab population – were expelled or fled from their homes, at first by Zionist paramilitaries, and after the establishment of Israel, by its military. The expulsion and flight was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession, and displacement of Palestinian society, known as the Nakba. Dozens of massacres targeting Arabs were conducted by Israeli military forces and between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Village wells were poisoned in a biological warfare programme codenamed Operation Cast Thy Bread and properties were looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning. Other sites were subject to Hebraization of Palestinian place names.
Nakba Day in 2011 was the annual day of commemoration for the Palestinian people marking the Nakba—the displacement that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. Generally held on May 15, commemorative events in 2011 began on May 10, in the form of march by Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel on Israel's Independence Day. On May 13, clashes between stone-throwing youths and Israeli security forces in East Jerusalem resulted in one Palestinian fatality, and clashes continued there and in parts of the West Bank in the days following.
Nakba Day is the day of commemoration for the Nakba, also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, which comprised the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian people. It is generally commemorated on 15 May, the Gregorian calendar date of the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948. For Palestinians, it is an annual day of commemoration of the displacement that preceded and followed Israel's establishment.
The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. During the war, the British withdrew from Palestine, Zionist forces conquered territory and established the State of Israel, and over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled. It was the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict.
The Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) is a UK-based advocacy group established in 1996 in London. It is an "independent consultancy focusing on the historical, political and legal aspects of the Palestinian Refugees". In July 2015, PRC was given special consultative status at the United Nations as non-governmental organisation (NGO). The centre specialises in research and analysis of issues concerning the Palestinians who were displaced, and subsequently prevented from returning, during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. It advocates "their internationally recognised legal right to return."
The Nakba is the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, property, and belongings, along with the destruction of their society and the suppression of their culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations. The term is used to describe the events of the 1948 Palestine war in Mandatory Palestine as well as the ongoing persecution and displacement of Palestinians by Israel. As a whole, it covers the fracturing of Palestinian society and the long-running rejection of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
"Ongoing Nakba" is a historiographical framework and term that interprets the Palestinian "Nakba" or "catastrophe" as a still emerging and unfolding phenomenon. The phrase emerged in the late 1990s and its first public usage is widely credited to Hanan Ashrawi, who referred to it in a speech at the 2001 World Conference against Racism. The term was later adopted by scholars such as Joseph Massad and Elias Khoury. As an intellectual framework, the "ongoing Nakba" narrative reflects the conceptualisation of the Palestinian experience not as a series of isolated events, but as "a continuous experience of violence and dispossession", or as other have termed it, the "recurring loss" of the Palestinian people.
Nakba denial is a form of historical denialism pertaining to the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and its accompanying effects, which Palestinians refer to collectively as the "Nakba". Underlying assumptions of Nakba denial cited by scholars can include the denial of historically documented violence against Palestinians, the denial of a distinct Palestinian identity, the idea that Palestine was barren land, and the notion that Palestinian dispossession were part of mutual transfers between Arabs and Jews justified by war.
Michal concedes the fact that Israelis do the same thing to the memory of the Nakba when saying "it was in 1948, enough talking about the past, let's talk about the future." When the Palestinians come with their keys [the Palestinian symbol of their lost homes], she says, "it's the same thing, it's a memory still burning in the hearts of families
Keys must always be the symbol of the Palestinian "Nakba" – the "disaster" – the final, fateful, terrible last turning in the lock of those front doors as 750,000 Arab men, women and children fled or were thrown out of their homes in what was to become the state of Israel in 1947 and 1948.
The gigantic key, dedicated to all the refugees around the world, was unveiled in a spectacular show at the Katara Amphitheatre last night featuring Palestinian Arab Idol winner Mohammed Assaf. "This key symbol for all the refugees in the world. We want to set a Guinness World Record to say that it is the right of these refugees to return back home. Actually this is linked particularly to Palestinian refugees."... Around 4,000 people filled the Katara Amphitheatre to witness the unveiling of the enormous key and enjoy the concert highlighted by the performance of the young Palestinian singer who is the first United Nations Relief and Works Agency regional youth ambassador for Palestine refugees.