Palestinians to mark Nakba Day with general strike

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip plan to stage a general strike next Wednesday to mark Nakba Day, which commemorates the expulsion in 1948 of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in historical Palestine.

In a statement, the National Authority for Breaking the Siege -- composed of several Gaza-based resistance factions -- also called on Palestinians to mark the occasion by taking part in planned demonstrations in Gaza.

It also warned "the Israeli enemy" against "committing follies against peaceful demonstrators".

Meaning "The Catastrophe" in Arabic, Nakba is a term used by Palestinians to refer to the 1948 expulsions, which were carried out by invading Zionist forces.

The Palestine-Israel conflict dates back to 1917 when the British government, in the now-famous Balfour Declaration, called for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people".

Since March of last year, Palestinians have been holding weekly rallies along the Gaza-Israel buffer zone.

Demonstrators demand the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in historical Palestine from which they were driven in 1948 to make way for the new state of Israel.

They also demand an end to Israel's 12-year blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has gutted the coastal enclave's economy and deprived its roughly two million inhabitants of many basic commodities.

Since the protests began more than one year ago, nearly 270 Palestinian demonstrators have been killed -- and thousands more injured -- by Israeli troops deployed near the buffer zone.