Israeli soldiers shot 16-year-old Fihmeh Abd Al-Jawwad Ad-Dardouk at the notorious Huwwara checkpoint near Nablus at 20:30 on Monday night, and prevented ambulances and medical teams from reaching the boy as he lay bleeding to death on the ground. He died some 30 minutes later. The Israeli military held the boy's body for 2 hours after the killing, finally allowing Palestinian medical teams to access the site of the shooting at around 22:30.

There are photographs hanging on the walls of my dressing room in the Staatsoper Berlin; photographs that remind me of what I see when I look out the windows of my house in Jerusalem. They are slightly faded and here and there the paper is crumbling, but one can easily recognise the views. The old city, the Dome of the Rock with its shining cupola, the walls, the gates. Sometimes I sit in this room before a performance, looking at these pictures and thinking of Jerusalem, of Israel, my home.

After 60 years of expulsion, exile and refuge; after 60 years of international impotence, and the failure of international organizations to enforce their own decisions; and after 60 years of Israeli arrogance, we declare that the commemoration of the Nakba as of today will nothing but a date to renew our commitment to struggle until we achieve our return to our original homes and lands. We declare the return to be the program of our struggle, and not just a demand, and will continue as such until the end of the Nakba, "whether they like it or not."

60 years ago, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their land. Thousands were killed while refusing to leave their villages behind or attempting to return. Refugees were dispersed all around the world, and the Palestinian Nakba began.

On June 11, eight year old Hadeel Al-Sumairi was killed when her home in south eastern Gaza was shelled by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Less than a week earlier, eight year old Aya Hamdan Al-Najjar was killed by a rocket fired from an IOF helicopter.