UN General Assembly passes resolution commemorating Nakba Day

The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on Wednesday to mark Nakba Day, which commemorates the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their lands in 1948 when Israel was established.

90 states voted in favour of the resolution while 30, including the US, the UK, Germany and Canada voted against, with 47 abstaining, The National reported.

The resolution was sponsored by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the latter of which signed a normalisation deal with Israel in 2020 which was widely condemned by Palestinians as a betrayal of their cause.

Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour praised the resolution.

“Today, this General Assembly will finally acknowledge the historical injustice that befell the Palestinian people, adopting a resolution that decides to commemorate in this General Assembly Hall the 75th anniversary of the Nakba,” he said.

“Our people deserve recognition of their plight, justice for the victims, reparation for their loss and fulfilment of their rights.”

The resolution calls for the Nakba, which falls on May 15^th every year, to be commemorated in the General Assembly in 2023. It also calls for the publication of archives and testimonies related to it.

In 1947, the UN General Assembly voted in favour of a resolution partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. This was a key event in the lead up to the Nakba and the dispossession of the Palestinian people.

Palestinians and Arab states strongly rejected the resolution at the time because it gave most of Palestine to a proposed Jewish state when Palestinian Arabs were a majority of the population.

“Seventy five years ago, a very different General Assembly adopted a resolution partitioning Palestine without ever consulting the people of Palestine,” Mansour said, pointing out that Israel was still occupying Palestinian land and dispossessing Palestinians.

He warned that the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict was reaching “the end of the road”.

“Either the international community summons the will to act decisively or it will let peace die passively,” he added.

However, Israeli UN representative Gilad Erdan condemned the General Assembly, saying it had voted in favour of what he called a “false” narrative of the Nakba.

“By supporting resolutions that single out, condemn and vilify Israel, you are telling the Palestinians that their path of incitement and terror-funding truly pays off,” he said.