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| 14/05/2008 When US President George W. Bush addresses Israeli parliament to mark the formation of the Zionist entity on the Palestinian territories, thousands of black balloons will darken the skies as Palestinians mark their greatest loss.
Bush is scheduled to speak on Thursday, the day Palestinians commemorate the Naqba, or "catastrophe," of Israel's creation in 1948, the defeat of five invading Arab armies and the expulsion or flight of more than 760,000 people.
"To commemorate the Naqba, Palestinians will attempt to turn the skies over Jerusalem black with 21,915 balloons - a balloon to mark each day of our dispossession," a statement from organizers said.
At the same time, a massive demonstration will be held in the West Bank political capital of Ramallah to protest Bush's address. Bush told reporters in Washington ahead of his trip that he will "talk about democracy and the history of democracies and the challenge of democracies in dealing with existential threats of terrorists."
Israel's three Arab political parties, drawing support from the 1.2 million descendents of the 160,000 Arabs who remained in the Jewish state after the 1948 war, said Wednesday their 10 MPs will boycott the speech.
Bush is "responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the region," said MP Jamal Zahalka of the National Democratic Assembly.
"His speech ... shows complete indifference to the Naqba of the Palestinian people and its suffering, and betrays his total ideological bias towards Israel."
For Palestinians, May 15 will be another grim milestone in their decades-old struggle to realize the dream of regaining their occupied territories.
"Sixty years ago we were pushed into exodus and suffered an injustice. Today we call upon the world to give our people justice," Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, himself a refugee from the Israeli town of Safed, said Tuesday.
The people who fled or were driven from their homes in 1948 have since given rise to a UN-registered refugee population of 4.5 million in camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip.
In the Gaza Strip, Hamas will hold a mass rally on Thursday at the Erez crossing with Israel protesting what it calls the "New Naqba" - a crippling blockade imposed after the Islamist movement seized power in June.
"The Palestinian people will not be silent about this slow death and will take full responsibility for breaking the siege," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said, adding that he expected "great numbers" of people to participate.
Two-thirds of the 1.5 million people in impoverished Gaza are refugees, the vast majority of them living off food handouts from the United Nations. | 
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