Palestinians mourn as Bush fetes Israel's 60th year

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

JABALYA, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - As U.S. President George W. Bush celebrated Israel's birth on Wednesday, Ahmed Abdallah was marking a milestone of his own -- 60 years since Jewish forces killed his relatives and forced him into exile.

"I saw my mother in tears every time she remembered our family being slaughtered," the retired Palestinian teacher said in the Gaza Strip's Jabalya refugee camp, his home since 1948.

In that year, a shell killed most of his family as they fled from a village north of Gaza under fire. Abdallah, aged two, was wounded. But he and his mother lived, joining over 700,000 other Palestinians as refugees from homes now lying inside Israel.

This week, as Bush fetes the Jewish state's 60 years and tries to energise faltering peace talks, Palestinians will mourn the "Nakba", or "catastrophe", that befell their people.

Groups numbering in the hundreds marched on Wednesday to highlight the plight of refugees and their descendants, 4.5 million of whom now live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, or further afield, many of them in grim camps.

Some protesters in the West Bank threw stones at Israeli troops and police. Several were hurt by rubber bullets. Chanting "We want to return to Palestine", around 1,000 Palestinians from camps in southern Lebanon protested at the Israeli border.

Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar, speaking in the Islamist-run Gaza Strip, called Bush a hypocrite unwelcome in the Holy Land: "Bush's visit is unacceptable. He is coming to celebrate 60 years of our bloodshed," he said.

"He is coming to encourage them to cause us more suffering."