Palestinian Authority launches competition to design memorial commemorating 1948 Nakba

The Palestinian Authority on Monday launched a competition to design a memorial that commemorates the Nakba of 1948, the name given to the massacre and forced expulsion of Palestinians by Zionist forces. 

Artists, designers, students and others interested were invited to submit ideas for the memorial set to be constructed in Al-Istiqlal Park, Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. 

Applicants must present a summary of their idea and illustrative pictures to a special panel. The winning design will be announced no later than 9 February.

Proposals must take into consideration "the pain and suffering of the Palestinian people as a result of the Nakba as well as a reflection of the Palestinian narrative related to the Nakba, dispersion, struggle and hope," reported Palestinian news website Wafa.  

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas decided at the end of last year to establish a national memorial for the Nakba, in what was described by Wafa as "an effort to consolidate the Palestinian narrative and the Nakba". 

The Nakba, meaning catastrophe, saw 750,000 Palestinians flee their homes and an estimated 15,000 Palestinians die when Israeli forces stormed villages and towns with the ambition of turning an Arab-majority land into a Jewish-majority state. 

Entire homes were burnt to the ground as Zionist forces indiscriminately killed unarmed civilians and buried them in mass graves during the creation of the Israeli state. 

Palestinian academic Rashid Khalidi, author of 'The Hundred Years War on Palestine', has described the Nakba as "the destruction of Palestinian society". 

Khalidi has argued that the threatened expulsion of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah in occupied east Jerusalem, among other examples, serves as the "sequel" to this devastating, systematic and continuing event.