Desertpeace

“Our country died 60 years ago,” said Salah Zalatimo, 28, who blames the current Israeli-Palestinian fac-eoff on “minority extremists on both sides.”

During the 1948 War of Independence, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs fled or were driven from their homes – estimates range from 650,000 to 1 million. Palestinian demands to return with their descendants – at least 4 million people, by UN estimate – represent one of the thorniest issues in the Middle East.

Under umbrellas in a driving rain, with the wind whipping their green, white and black Palestinian flags, the crowd marked the anniversary of the Nakba by dancing, singing and chanting, “Free, free Palestine!”

“It was the death of a nation that coincided with the birth of a nation,” said Zalatimo, an American-born business consultant who said his family members were expelled from Israel in 1948, then again from the West Bank during the 1967 war.

“For us, it’s been 60 years of tears and heartache and pain and homelessness,” he said.

Poet and writer Remy Kanazi, who lives in Queens, said his grandmother was forced out of her home in Israel when she was pregnant with his mother.

“The Palestinians are Israel’s indigenous population, and they’re there to stay – and the Jews are there to stay,” Kanazi said. “Any resolution has to be based on equality for both peoples. I believe in a one-state solution – one man, one vote.”

Ora Wise, a Jerusalem-born rabbi’s daughter who directs education programs at a Brooklyn synagogue, blamed Israel for the area’s problems. “The Israeli government and military policies are the major blockages of any peace or justice in the region,” she said.

She pointed to the situation in the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Islamic militant group Hamas. The humanitarian situation in the coastal region is harsh, largely as a result of an embargo Israel has placed on it due to ongoing rocket attacks by Palestinian militants on southern Israel. A shopping mall in Ashkelon was hit on Wednesday in one such attack, in which 90 people were wounded, four of them seriously.

The United States is home to the largest population of Palestinians outside the Middle East – more than 72,000, according to the 2000 census, with hundreds of thousands more related to Palestinians. Many live in the New York metropolitan area.

Among them is the acclaimed comedian Maysoon Zayid, who told the crowd that as a child with Palestinian relatives in the Middle East, “I spent my winters in sunny New Jersey, and my summers in a frickin’ war zone.”

Internationally, the Palestinian cause has been embraced by personalities including actress Vanessa Redgrave, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, singer-bassist Roger Waters of the rock band Pink Floyd and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu of South Africa.

Zalatimo still harbored the hope that a peaceful resolution is in sight.

“If we removed the leadership on both sides and let the people meet face to face, I’m sure that we could find a resolution,” he said.