Israel celebrates 60th birthday as Palestinians protest
Posted on Friday, May 9, 2008
JERUSALEM — The blue and white flag emblazoned with the Star of David fluttered from car windows and apartment balconies and around the soccer stadium at Hebrew University. Jet fighters roared overheard in formation, paratroopers landed on the field, a band performed Hebrew folk songs.
Israelis were proud to be 60.
“It’s a good feeling in my heart,” said Shmuel Hirsch, 66, who fought in Israel’s wars in 1967, ’ 73 and ’ 82.
He was attending Israel’s Independence Day celebration in Jerusalem, 60 years after the Jewish community in the British Mandate of Palestine declared statehood.
The day before, Memorial Day, the Jewish state remembered its 22, 437 fallen soldiers.
“For me, it means the independence of being Jewish in our country and not fearing being Jewish,” said Limor Louie, 39, who was born in Jerusalem, the daughter of immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan.
In events across the country, Israelis danced, cheered and enjoyed air shows and fireworks. Israeli authorities shut down crossings from Palestinian areas to Israel on Monday night after intelligence warnings of possible planned terror attacks targeting Thursday’s festivities. The crossings were scheduled to reopen over the weekend.
Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, an anniversary observed according to the Hebrew calendar. President Bush will be in Israel next week for more anniversary celebrations.
“There are a lot of crises and differences, but this ceremony makes us feel united,” said Tal Rubin, 19, an air force helicopter technician.
Outside the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Palestinians marked the day with black flags and slogans calling for their right to return to homes now within Israel, lost after the 1948 war.
“Their independence is our Nakba,” read one sign, in English and Arabic, in a somber march between two refugee camps. Nakba means catastrophe in Arabic.
Marchers followed a flatbed truck carrying a key weighing two tons and measuring 33 feet.
Palestinians are attempting to register it as the world’s largest key.
In the iconography of Palestinian nationalist symbols, the key represents the Palestinians’ claim to their historic homeland — the territory now controlled by Israel.
Many Palestinian refugees pass the keys to their former homes from one generation to the next. About 700, 000 Palestinians became refugees after the 1948 war. Those who are still living, and their descendants, now number some 4. 5 million.
“They have built their state on the ruins of our land, our homes,” said one of the marchers, Fatima Jaafari, who was born in 1948 in Rafat, a village that once stood in what is now central Israel. Information for this article was contributed from Bethlehem by Ahmad Mashal of Cox News Service.
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