Turkish envoy: Palestinian plight is ‘bleeding wound’

The plight of Palestinian refugees is like a bleeding wound, Turkey’s special envoy to Libya Emrullah Isler said on Tuesday.

“The Palestinian refugee issue is a bleeding wound, and the whole Middle East is dealing with this issue. However, Israel is always trying to make this issue forgotten,” Isler told a migration and diaspora forum in the Turkish capital Ankara organized by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (ORSAM) in association with the Turkish Culture Ministry’s Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YTB).

Since March of 2018, Gazans have held weekly rallies along the buffer zone to demand the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in historical Palestine from which they were driven in 1948 to make way for the new state of Israel.

OPINION: Palestinians Keep Their Right of Return Alive Through Hope, Resistance

They also demand an end to Israel’s 12-year blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has gutted the coastal enclave’s economy and deprived its roughly two million inhabitants of many basic commodities.

Since the rallies began more than a year ago, scores of protesters have been killed – and thousands more injured – by Israeli troops deployed near the buffer zone.

Palestinians along the Gaza-Israel border reaffirm the ‘Right of Return’ and get shot by IOF – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]