About 300 Arab Israelis gathered Thursday in the ruins of a village that Palestinians fled during the 1948 war that led to the creation of Israel, to commemorate what Palestinians call the "Nakba", or catastrophe.
As Israel celebrated Independence Day on Thursday, the demonstrators — men, women, and children — marched through the ruins chanting, "Your independence is our Nakba".
The place where the demonstrators gathered was previously the village of Al-Lajjun.
The site, once home to thousands of Palestinians, has now been partly taken over by kibbutz Megiddo, an Israeli farming community.
This year's remembrance unfolded against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, where more than 18 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas militants have displaced nearly all of the territory's 2.4 million people at least once, according to the United Nations.
Clad in traditional keffiyeh headscarves and garments, marchers sang the Palestinian anthem and shared memories of loss and resilience. Among them was Ziyad Mahajneh, 82, who had fled the village as a child in 1948.
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