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Op-Ed video: 'It's not 75 years from the Nakba, it's 75 years of the Nakba'

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said the international community was not doing enough to 'support justice and accountability'

For the first time in the history of the United Nations the world body will stage a high-level meeting on 15 May to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba.

The word "Nakba" means "catastrophe" in Arabic, and refers to the systematic ethnic cleansing of two-thirds of the Palestinian population by Zionist paramilitaries to make way for the creation of Israel in 1948.

Organisers said the event serves "as a reminder of the historic injustice suffered by the Palestinian people."

Speaking with Middle East Eye, Francesca Albanese, a lawyer and UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, said it was crucial to "support justice and accountability."

"Every day is a day of confinement, land confiscation, forced evictions, beatings and mass arrests," she said.

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"This is why the Palestinians calling [it] an ongoing Nakba. And in the face of it what is the international community doing? Nothing for the better and nothing for justice."

Francesca Albanese is a lawyer and UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967
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