Ammon News - The United Nations will officially commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba of the Palestinian people for the first time since 1948, at the headquarters of the UN in New York.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is headlining Monday’s UN commemoration of “Nakba” or “catastrophe.”

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, called the UN observance “historic” and significant because the General Assembly played a key role in the partition of Palestine.

“It’s acknowledging the responsibility of the UN of not being able to resolve this catastrophe for the Palestinian people for 75 years,” Mansour told a group of UN reporters recently.

He said “the catastrophe to the Palestinian people is still ongoing:” The Palestinians still don’t have an independent state, and they don’t have the right to return to their homes as called for in a General Assembly resolution adopted in December 1948.

As the 75th anniversary approached, the now 193-member General Assembly approved a resolution last Nov. 30 by a vote of 90-30 with 47 abstentions requesting the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People organize a high-level event on May 15 to commemorate the Nakba.