Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has signed a presidential decree making it a criminal offense to deny the nakba.
Nakba means “disaster” or “catastrophe” in Arabic, and is used by Palestinians to refer to the establishment of modern-day Israel on May 14, 1948.
The decree states that anyone found guilty of denying the nakba faces up to two years in jail.
It defines the nakba as “a crime against humanity” carried out by the “Zionist gangs,” Israel’s Channel 12 reported.
The decree comes just weeks after Abbas, at an event at the United Nations, compared Israel and mainstream Jews to Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief who played a key role in the genocide of Europe’s Jews.
The first official “U.N. Nakba Day,” held at the world body in New York earlier this month, was boycotted by the United States and more than 45 other countries.
