RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) – Thousands of Palestinians on Thursday marked the 61st anniversary of the Naqba, the “catastrophe” that sparked an exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees after Israel was created in 1948.

Holding Palestinian flags and photos of Arab villages razed by Israeli forces six decades ago, demonstrators marched in the centre of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“The right of return is sacred”, “No peace without the right of return”, read the banners held by the marchers.
“Sixty-one years have passed since the Naqba (but) the images of uprooting, exodus, death, imprisonment and attempts to obliterate our identity and existence remain fresh,” Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said in a television address.
“The independent Palestinian state will dawn and the day will come when not a single refugee is languishing in exile and not a single prisoner is in the jails of the (Israeli) occupation,” he said.
Israeli policies “will lead to continued violence and to escalation affecting the whole region,” Abbas added, citing Jewish settlements and the barrier wall erected in the West Bank.
This year's ceremonies took place a day early because the May 15 anniversary of the Naqba falls on a Friday, a day off in the mostly Muslim Palestinian territories.
Political and religious figures led the demonstration which began at the tomb of legendary Palestinian chief Yasser Arafat, at the Ramallah headquarters of the Palestinian Authority run by Abbas.
In the northern West Bank town of Nablus, about 2,000 people participated in a march, holding Palestinian flags tied with black ribbons in sign of mourning.
In Aqabet Jaber refugee camp, in the oasis town of Jericho, participants unveiled a statue featuring a six-metre (20-foot) metallic key, symbolizing the refugees' attachment to the houses from which they fled or were forced out in 1948.
Around 700,000 people were exiled in this way in 1948, with the United Nations estimating that today they and their descendants number 4.6 million.
This year's Naqba fell during the first official visit to the region by Pope Benedict XVI, who during a visit to the West Bank on Thursday expressed deep sympathy with the refugees.
“In these days ... (the longing for peace) takes on a particular poignancy as you recall the events of May 1948 and the years of conflict, as yet unresolved, that followed from those events,” he said at Aida refugee camp outside Bethlehem.
“With anguish, I have witnessed the situation of refugees who, like the Holy Family, have had to flee their homes,” he said.