Some 15 activists from the organization Zochrot were besieged by police on Wednesday night in the NGO’s offices, in order to prevent them from quietly commemorating the Palestinian Nakba on Israeli Independence Day. Three were arrested for reading aloud names of destroyed villages.

TEL AVIV (IPS) - In a new project that has tackled one of the most divisive issues plaguing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a diverse group of academics, architects, urban planners and Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups are examining how the right of return of Palestinian refugees can be implemented on the ground.

“Law will not influence the way we commemorate the Nakba,” Haneen Zoabi, Palestinian member of the Knesset, told The Electronic Intifada. “On the contrary, we must prove to our people and to the state that we will not be afraid from this law and that this will not succeed in oppressing our feeling or our identity. We will commemorate the Nakba in a much more impressive way this year than we ever did.”

Most of the original inhabitants of Ein Hod, which was called Ayn Hawd prior to the expulsions of '48, and was continuously populated since the 12th century, were expelled to refugee camps in Jordan and Jenin in the West Bank. But a small and exceptionally resilient band of residents fled to the hills, set up a makeshift camp and watched as Jewish foreigners moved into their homes.

Please, you and your children, don’t ever give up your right to return. Not (only) for yourselves but for me also. Do you understand? If you give up this right all chance for a just life in this land will be lost and I will be sentenced to the shameful life of an eternal occupier, armed from the soles of my feet to the depths of my soul and always afraid, like all colonizers.

The Nakba law's motivation: to frighten everyone who wishes to commemorate the human and political tragedy that occurred in 1948, in which the Zionists expelled most of the Palestinian inhabitants of the country and the state of Israel destroyed most of the localities in which they lived.

They also argue that kibbutzniks and residents of Tel Aviv are the most dangerous settlers. Is this a marginal organization of lunatics, or a threat to the Jewish state? People on the right would have us be wary of those they call "traitors."

"Sedek" gently leads the Israeli reader, whose trauma clashes with the Palestinian's trauma, to uncover the Nakba.‎

Yehuda Ziv, who heads the Government Names Committee's subcommittee for community names: "I claimed that original Arab names of existing communities should be added as part of a first map of in Arabic being prepared by the Israel Mapping Center, but I was told that there is no room for that."

Following the intervention of Jerusalem municipal council member Adv. Yair Gabai, the police prevented the "Zochrot" organization from conducting an event to mark the Palestinian "Nakba" in the city on the eve of Jerusalem Day.

59th anniversary ceremony of the massacre to take place in Deir Yassin today. This year, organizers must contend with a new book that seeks to refute the facts.

The Zochrot organization tries to present the Palestinian side of the events of 1948 to the Jewish public. Director Eitan Bronstein senses a change and emphasizes: Acknowledging their version is the key to peace.

The "Zochrot" organization has begun collecting funds in favor of refugees in Lebanon, particularly for Palestinians.

Protest against the war in Lebanon reaches the "bubble".

The future of a nation that forgets its past is cloaked in fog.

"The catastrophe of the Palestinian people is silenced and is not present in the physical and cultural landscape of Israel," claims the organization, whose members ask to preserve the Palestinian villages in Tel Aviv.

The omission of the "Palestinian period" in the area by State authorities and the JNF is the subject of a petition submitted to the High Court of Justice on Thursday by the organization "Zochrot," through Adv. Michael Sfard.

A lawyer who is a Haifa resident, and who asked to remain anonymous, said that he found a sign in Arabic with the name of a street from the period before the War of Independence and immediately informed members of the City Council and various public figures.

The site, the area of which is about 45 dunams, also contains the central structure of the Ramat Aviv Hotel, built in a modern style in 1951, with a vacation atmosphere that reminded Tel Avivians of the beaches of Florida. In addition to the central structure, the hotel included 21 country-style gazebos. The gazebos have already been razed and the hotel, an elegant and eye-pleasing structure, is sadly also slated for demolition.

Dozens of Jews and Arabs yesterday marched around the fence surrounding Jerusalem's Kfar Shaul psychiatric hospital, the site of the Deir Yassin massacre, to commemorate its 55th anniversary.