Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas holds up a graphic as he addresses the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on September 23, 2022. (Photo by AFP)

United Nations, December 2 (RHC)-- The United Nations General Assembly has voted in a favor of a pro-Palestinian resolution to commemorate the Nakba (Catastrophe) Day, which marks the Israeli regime’s claiming existence in 1948.    The Assembly adopted the resolution on Wednesday, with 90 votes in favor, 30 negative votes and 47 abstentions. 

The initiative was sponsored by Egypt, Jordan, Senegal, Tunisia, Yemen and the Palestinians and was approved despite the opposition of the United States, UK and Israel.   Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands were also among the countries that voted against it.

May 15th for Israelis is a festivity that marks the creation of Israel back in 1948.  But for Palestinians, the day is the starting point for decades of misery and suffering under the Israeli occupation of their lands; that is why Palestinians refer to May 15th as Nakba Day, or the Day of Catastrophe.

The UN resolution calls for a “commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Nakba, including by organizing a high-level event at the General Assembly Hall” in May 2023.  It also urges the “dissemination of relevant archives and testimonies.”

Nakba Day or "Day of Catastrophe" falls on May 15 each year. The date commemorates events that led to the Israeli regime forcibly expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes to make way for Israeli settlers 74 years ago.

Every year Palestinians and their supporters across the globe mark the anniversary of Nakba Day.  Many historians have referred to Nakba Day as climax of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Separately this week, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution regarding the Syrian Golan Heights, which the Israeli regime has been occupying for more than half a century, demanding the withdrawal of the regime from the area.  The anti-Israeli resolution was adopted by 92 votes in favor, eight votes against and 65 abstentions.

The resolution called on Israel to implement the resolutions of the Security Council and withdraw from the Golan to the line of June 4, 1967.  It also declared that Israel has failed to comply with Security Council Resolution 497 of 1981, which demands the occupying regime rescind its decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied area.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 497, adopted unanimously on 17 December 1981, declares that the Israeli annexation of the occupied Golan Heights is “null and void and without international legal effect” and further calls on the Tel Aviv regime to rescind its action.

Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria after the 1967 Six-Day War and later occupied it in a move that has never been recognized by the international community.  The regime has built dozens of settlements in the area ever since and has used the region to carry out a number of military operations against the Syrian government.