International Coalition For Human Rights in the Philippines
Statement
May 15, 2024
The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people on this the 76th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe). The violent birth of the state of Israel forced an estimated 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, displacing the vast majority of the population, turning them into refugees in their own land. The figure represents approximately 75% of the Palestinians who had previously resided within what became Israel’s armistice lines in 1949.
The Nakba involved the forced depopulation and destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages and the subsequent geographical erasure of Palestine. This occurred through Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine, its exiling of Palestinians and forcing them to be refugees, its dispossession of Palestinian property, its destruction of Palestinian cities, towns, and villages, and its attempt to erase the existence of the Palestinian from what is Palestine.
To this day there remain some 6 million registered Palestinian refugees living in at least 58 camps located throughout Palestine and neighbouring countries. There are at least 2.3 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, 1.5 million refugees in Gaza, 870,000 refugees in the occupied West Bank, 438,000 refugees in Syria, 480,000 refugees in Lebanon, 120,000 Palestinian refugees displaced from Syria to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt and increasingly, to Europe.
According to international law, refugees have the right to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced. Many Palestinians still hope to return to Palestine.
The Nakba Continues
The Nakba is a continuing process of displacement that has never stopped. On the 76th anniversary of the Nakba another catastrophe for the Palestinian People is being delivered by the Zionist State. Literally all 2.2 million citizens of Gaza have been turned for a second time into displaced persons since October 2023.
Israel has targeted Gaza’s intelligentsia – killing leading scholars, poets, doctors.
Israel has demolished and destroyed about 70% of the homes in Gaza.
Israel has demolished all 12 universities in Gaza.
Israel has destroyed most of the hospitals in Gaza.
Israel has detained and rendered missing hundreds of Palestinians.
Israel is currently engaged in a campaign to starve the Palestinian population by restricting food supplies.
Israel is now in the process of invading Rafah, where they had driven 1.2 million Palestinians from other parts of Gaza.
The Israeli government and the IDF have committed massacre after massacre in Gaza over this period. Their war crimes so heinous that even their closest allies are coming to the conclusion they are engaged in genocide and war crimes.
ICHRP works hard to uphold the human rights of the Filipino peoples, against a culture of impunity which is tacitly supported by foreign governments, a painful situation which the Palestinian people endure every day. Our work is built on the sense of justice and struggle of ordinary people in many countries, who earnestly and relentlessly press their governments and intergovernmental bodies to take action. This is also the basis of our solidarity with the Palestinian people.
ICHRP stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people on the 76th anniversary of the start of the Nakba.
ICHRP calls for an end to the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people, an end to the occupation and the unwinding of all illegal settlements and the return of all properties taken from Palestinians since 1947.
From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free!
