78 Years Since the Nakba: End Occupation, Apartheid and Genocide

Joint Declaration by the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Austria (PdA) and the Central Council of the Youth Front. Vienna, 15 May 2026.

On this 78th anniversary of the Nakba (Catastrophe), we commemorate the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by the Israeli military and Zionist militias between 1947 and 1949. During this period, over 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their land, more than 500 villages were destroyed, and numerous crimes were committed against the local population. Even before the establishment of the State of Israel, hundreds of thousands of people were already fleeing. To this day, millions of Palestinians are considered refugees and often live in inhumane conditions in camps in neighbouring countries.

The Nakba is not a historical event that has come to an end, but continues to this day. Israel’s policy of occupation persists in the form of land confiscation, illegal settlement construction, military violence, expulsions, torture and even murders in the open street. Even hospitals are not safe places, as was demonstrated in January 2024 in Jenin in the West Bank. At that time, Israeli intelligence agents disguised as doctors entered the hospital to execute two members of the Palestinian resistance in their hospital beds. The Gaza Strip has been subject to a total blockade for 17 years and, since October 2023, has been the scene of genocide before the eyes of the global public: tens of thousands of people have been killed by the Israeli military, and the infrastructure – ranging from residential buildings, hospitals and educational institutions to churches and mosques – has been largely reduced to rubble and ashes. At the same time, expulsions and attacks by the Israeli military and settlers are also intensifying in the West Bank. The Israeli government makes no secret of its aim to permanently expel large sections of Gaza’s population. Following the criminal US-Israeli attacks on Iran and Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, the Israeli army has expanded its occupation of southern Lebanon. In 2024, the occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights, which violates international law, was also expanded. Whether through massacres against the Palestinian resistance, illegal occupations or attacks in breach of international law aimed at forcing regime change in neighbouring states, as most recently in Iran: Israel is assuming the role of an outpost for US and European capital interests in the struggle to reshape West Asia.

The warmonger Israel is supported in this endeavour politically, economically and militarily by the US, the EU and their allies. The Austrian federal government, too, continues to stand unreservedly behind Israel and remains silent on the crimes against the Palestinian people. Austrian corporations doing business in Israel are profiting from occupation, apartheid and genocide. In this context, the Rotax Group deserves special mention, as its engines are found in Israeli combat drones.

It seems particularly cynical that, just one day after the Nakba commemoration in Vienna, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is set to take place, once again providing Israel with an international stage to polish its image. Whilst people in Gaza continue to be bombed, starved and displaced, the ESC is intended to create the impression of political normality. It is no longer a secret that the Israeli Foreign Ministry, in particular, has pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into social media campaigns in recent years to promote its own ESC entry. The ESC serves to whitewash Israel’s massacres. The organiser, the Austrian state broadcaster ORF, the City of Vienna and the federal government are making themselves complicit.

Meanwhile, solidarity with Palestine is being defamed and criminalised, and is to be pushed out of the public sphere. At an event, Mayor Ludwig addressed pro-Palestinian protesters, stating that the city would not be ’terrorised into submission’ and announced comprehensive security measures. The Vienna Social Democrats are proving once again that, like the federal party, they have no objection to the federal government’s foreign policy course of unconditional loyalty to Israel. Moreover, they have no scruples about spending over 20 million euros on hosting the ESC, whilst at the same time imposing massive austerity measures across all relevant sectors.

For us, commemorating the Nakba means also standing up against Israel’s present-day crimes and the whitewashing of these crimes, and exposing them – on the streets, in workplaces, in schools and universities.

Our solidarity goes out to the people in all parts of Palestine who are suffering under the crimes of the Israeli occupation regime, to the working class of Palestine, Israel and the entire region, and to the communists and progressive forces in Palestine and Israel.

We demand the release of all political prisoners from Israel’s torture prisons.

We demand the unconditional restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people and the right of return for all refugees.

We demand the dismantling of all illegal Israeli settlements, Israel’s complete withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories, and the laying of all the groundwork for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. End occupation, apartheid and genocide!