“We are witnessing new ‘Trails of Tears’ in the West Bank, mirroring Gaza’s fate.”
These were the words of Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the occupied West Bank and Gaza, on Tuesday. She was referencing the forced expulsion between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government of tens of thousands of Indigenous people from their homeland east of the Mississippi toward what became Oklahoma, leading to the deaths of thousands.
“What Israel is doing in occupied Palestine today has strong echoes of 1947-1949 Nakba and the 1967 Naksa,” Albanese said, referring to the two major ethnic cleansing campaigns carried out by Zionist militias and the Israeli army that produced hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees.
Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced throughout Israel’s ongoing military assault in the West Bank, with only 3,000 Palestinians returned to their homes. ….more
