As Israel celebrated Independence Day on Thursday, the demonstrators -- men, women, and children -- marched through the ruins chanting, “Your independence is our Nakba“.
The site, once home to thousands of Palestinians, has now been partly taken over by kibbutz Megiddo, an Israeli farming community.
Clad in traditional keffiyeh headscarves and garments, marchers sang the Palestinian anthem and shared memories of loss and resilience.
They “attacked our village with cannons and machine guns,“ Mahajneh recalled.
“Today, we are forbidden to be here. They ask us, ‘What are you doing here’?” he told AFP, referring to Israelis.
Memories of displacement echoed through the gathering.
The descendants of some 160,000 Palestinians who managed to remain in what became Israel presently make about 20 percent of its population.
For more than two decades, Arab Israelis have marked Israeli Independence Day with an annual “March of Return” to a depopulated Palestinian village.
“They want us to stop from doing even the simplest act: remembering the Nakba,“ said Faisal Mahajneh, another displaced resident of Al-Lajjun.
“We are the people of this land, and we will not lose hope” of returning, said Ziyad.
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