GAZA — Palestinian factions on Tuesday rallied in Gaza’s center marking the somber 55th anniversary of the Israelis’ occupation of more Palestinian territories in 1967.

Many Palestinians gathered at the “unknown martyr’s square” with billboards reading, “our Aqsa not your temple,” waving Palestinian flags and pledging limitless sacrifices for occupied Jerusalem.

The distressing occasion, known in Arabic as “Al-Naksa,” alludes to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war that ended with loss of more lands to the Israelis, namely east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Ismail Radwan, a leader of the Islamic Hamas movement, called on the Palestinians, in remarks to KUNA, to join ranks and jointly retaliate for escalatory Israeli attacks. The Palestinians will always consider Jerusalem as Palestine’s capital, he said.

Another Hamas chief, Ahmad Al-Mudallal, called in a statement to the Kuwaiti news agency for hammering out a joint strategy to maintain the resistance as the sole option for the Palestinian people to deter “the Israeli crimes against Al-Aqsa mosque.”

Israeli security forces and settlers have recently stepped up assaults on Palestinians in courtyard of Al-Aqsa, inflicting casualties among worshippers. Many Jews believe that an ancient temple for their community is under the ground at the mosque.

Al-Mudallal warned that the continuing breaches against Jerusalem and the bids to alter the Islamic status of the mosque would lead to a religious war.

The June War in 1967 saw Israel take over all of historical Palestine and begin its military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Over 300,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and it would be decades before the brutal nature of the occupation was exposed to the world during the First Intifada in 1987.

The narrative of the Al Naksa is drastically different between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states involved in the June War.

However, for Palestinians, the Al Naksa saw multiple villages destroyed, displacement, fear and also the destruction of the Moroccan Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. The settler movement also began after the Al Naksa and continues unabated today.

The impact of the Al Naksa continues to this day. The Palestinian refugee crisis is the longest running refugee crisis in the world, and in addition to that, the invisibility of Palestinian refugees in ‘peace talks’ or even in the narrative of Palestine continues to deny them their basic rights and humanity. — Agencies