SAFURIYAH, May 8: Arabs living in Israel marched for the right of return for refugees who fled their homes during the 1948 war that followed the creation of Israel, which celebrated its 60th anniversary on Thursday.

Chanting “no alternative to the right of return”, thousands of people walked up a grassy hill toward a pine grove that covers the ruins of the Arab village of Safuriyah.

As they made their way up a dirt path alongside a highway, they waved Palestinian flags and banners of Arab Israeli parties, chanting: “With our blood, with our soul, we sacrifice for Palestine.”

On the other side of the road, a few dozen people celebrated the anniversary of Israel’s creation, waving the country’s flag.

“The crusaders were here for 150 years and then they left. The same thing will happen with Israel,” said Suleiman Abd al-Majid, 73, who fled Safuriyah at the age of 14 and now lives in nearby Nazareth.

Leaning on a cane and breathing heavily as he made his way up the hill, Abd al-Majid insisted that his 12 children and 40 grandchildren have the right to return to what was once his home.

About 760,000 Arabs lost their homes in the war that started immediately after the creation of Israel in May 1948.

Abd al-Majid, wearing a coat and tie and a traditional Arab headscarf known as a kefiyah, still remembers the fateful night when Israeli forces seized the village.

“That night the planes came and bombed the roads, and then the tanks came into the town and they occupied it. We fled to the olive groves. I hid there with 50 other people, all women and children,” he said.

Demonstrators of all ages took part in Thursday’s protest, staged as Israel celebrated its birthday with military displays, beach parties and fireworks.

“Even after a million years we will still be steadfast and we will still demand the right of the refugees to return to Palestine,” said Aziz Basiuni, a 21-year-old university student.

He held aloft a huge flag with a picture of revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, whom he called a “symbol of victory”.

“Wherever there is injustice in the world, you find him there,” he said of the iconic Argentine who fought in the Cuban revolution alongside Fidel Castro. In the occupied W. Bank, Palestinians also marked six decades since what they call the “Naqba” — Arabic for catastrophe. In Bethlehem, several hundred Palestinians chanting “the right of return is sacred” staged a march around a truck carrying a 10-ton metal key symbolising the homes people lost in 1948.—AFP