Israeli desecration of Palestinian cemetery prompts emergency meeting

Israel's Palestinian-majority Umm al-Fahm municipality held an emergency meeting on Saturday following Israeli attacks on graves at the former site of the Palestinian village of Lajjun, whose residents were expelled by Zionist mili forces in 1948.

On Wednesday, Israeli authorities removed tombstones and a memorial to those killed before to Israel's capture of the city in 1948.

"Two weeks ago, we placed tombstones on the tombs of the martyrs who died before the year of the Nakba. We wrote down the names of each martyr, in addition to Quranic verses and a small image of the Palestinian flag," Hassan Jabreen, a member of the Umm al-Fahm and Lajjun memorial committee, told The New Arab's Arabic-language service, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

"They desecrate the cemetery and do not respect the dead," he added.

Jabreen said that following Saturday's meeting, the municipality will formally follow up the case with the Israel Land Administration, the Megiddo Regional Council and government departments.

Lajjun fell to Zionist militias on May 30, 1948, and its population of around 1,250 Palestinians was expelled. The village's ethnic cleansing laid way for the establishment of the Israeli settlement of Megiddo.

The Nakba, meaning 'catastrophe', saw the devastating ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians from their native land in 1948 to make way for the creation of Israel.