ANKARA

Turkey’s foreign minister on Saturday expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people as he celebrated the 73rd anniversary of the Nakba, or the disaster.

On Twitter, Mevlut Cavusoglu said the Palestinian people were still subjected to “ethnic, religious and cultural cleansing” since the Nakba in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were exiled from their homeland.

“Will forever stand alongside the Palestinian brothers and sisters in their fight for freedom and dignity,” he promised.

A total of 145 people, including 41 children and 23 women, have been killed and 1,100 injured since Israel launched the attacks on Gaza on May 10.

The airstrikes on Gaza were preceded by days of tension and Israeli aggression in occupied East Jerusalem, where hundreds of Palestinians were attacked by Israeli forces and settlers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and in the Sheikh neighborhood. Jarrah.

Tensions spread from occupied East Jerusalem to Gaza after Palestinian resistance groups vowed to respond to Israeli assaults.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and annexed the entire city in 1980 in a move never recognized by the international community.

Nakba Day

Observed on May 15 each year, Nakba Day marks the forced expulsion in 1948 of nearly 800,000 Palestinians from their homes in historic Palestine.

73 years ago, hundreds of Palestinians were forced by Zionist gangs to leave their villages and towns for neighboring countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Another part of the Palestinians found themselves displaced to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to pave the way for the establishment of the State of Israel.

Despite their decades of suffering, however, Palestinians continue to assert their right to return to their homes and villages in historic Palestine, finding ways to make this right achievable.

The Palestine-Israel conflict dates back to 1917 when the British government, in the now famous Balfour Declaration, called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the Nakba displaced nearly 800,000 Palestinians out of the 1.4 million Palestinians who lived in historic Palestine in 1948 in 1,300 villages and towns.

On the other hand, Palestinians today are exposed to unprecedented oppression and attacks from Israel in their homeland.

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