Whereas May 15, 2023, is the 75th commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba, meaning catastrophe in English, a term which refers to Israel’s uprooting, dispossession, and exile of the Palestinian people from their homeland, and Israeli politicians are increasingly threatening Palestinians with a second Nakba today; Whereas the Nakba is the root cause of the issues that continue to divide Israel and the Palestinian people today, and a just and lasting peace cannot be established without addressing the Nakba and remedying its injustices toward the Palestinian people; Whereas the Nakba is not only a historical event, but also an ongoing process characterized by Israel’s separate-and-unequal laws and policies toward Palestinians, including the destruction of Palestinian homes, the construction and expansion of illegal settlements, and Israel’s confinement of Palestinians to ever-shrinking areas of land; Whereas, during the Nakba, Israel forcibly exiled or caused to flee for their lives under duress of military campaigns, which frequently included massacres and other atrocities committed against civilians, at least 750,000 Palestinians (approximately 75 percent of the indigenous population that had lived in areas that became Israel), who became refugees; Whereas, by 1949, Israel had depopulated and destroyed more than 400 Palestinian villages and cities, often demolishing all homes and other buildings, planting forests over them, or confiscating and expropriating Palestinian property to give to Jewish Israelis