IV 
118TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. RES. 388 
Recognizing the ongoing Nakba and Palestine refugees rights. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MAY 10, 2023 
Ms. TLAIB (for herself, Ms. OMAR, Ms. MCCOLLUM, Mr. BOWMAN, Ms. 
OCASIO-CORTEZ, and Ms. BUSH) submitted the following resolution; 
which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs 
RESOLUTION 
Recognizing the ongoing Nakba and Palestine refugees 
rights. 
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 Pal-
estinians with a second Nakba today; 
Whereas the Nakba is the root cause of the issues that con-
tinue to divide Israel and the Palestinian people today, 
and a just and lasting peace cannot be established with-
out 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- 
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•HRES 388 IH 
unequal laws and policies toward Palestinians, including 
the destruction of Palestinian homes, the construction 
and expansion of illegal settlements, and Israel’s confine-
ment 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 de-
molishing all homes and other buildings, planting forests 
over them, or confiscating and expropriating Palestinian 
property to give to Jewish Israelis; 
Whereas the United States voted in favor of United Nations 
General Assembly Resolution 194 on December 11, 1948, 
which states that Palestinian ‘‘refugees wishing to return 
to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours 
should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable 
date, and that compensation should be paid for the prop-
erty of those choosing not to return and for loss of or 
damage to property which, under principles of inter-
national law or in equity, should be made good by the 
Governments or authorities responsible’’; 
Whereas Palestinian refugees right of return is not only stip-
ulated in a General Assembly resolution, but is also an-
chored in international law and in Article 13 of the Uni-
versal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that, 
‘‘Everyone has the right to leave any country, including 
his own, and to return to his country.’’; 
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•HRES 388 IH 
Whereas, on December 8, 1949, the United Nations General 
Assembly adopted Resolution 302 establishing the United 
Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees 
in the Near East, which the United States has financially 
supported on an almost continuous basis since its estab-
lishment; 
Whereas international law also recognizes that descendants of 
refugees retain their rights as refugees, and that accord-
ing to the United Nations, ‘‘Palestine refugees are not 
distinct from other protracted refugee situations such as 
those from Afghanistan or Somalia, where there are mul-
tiple generations of refugees, considered by UNHCR as 
refugees and supported as such. Protracted refugee situa-
tions are the result of the failure to find political solu-
tions to their underlying political crises.’’; 
Whereas a just and lasting resolution to the Palestinian- 
Israeli issue requires respect for and the implementation 
of Palestine refugee rights as enshrined in United Na-
tions General Assembly Resolution 194 and the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights; 
Whereas the United States Congress enacted the Elie Wiesel 
Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018 (Public 
Law 115–441) mandating the President to identify, mon-
itor, and report on potential and ongoing atrocities, and 
to develop policies and programs to improve the United 
States response, and noting that it is the policy of the 
United States to ‘‘regard the prevention of atrocities as 
in its national interest’’; 
Whereas Israeli politicians are increasingly threatening a sec-
ond Nakba against the Palestinian people, as did, for in-
stance, former Deputy Minister of Religious Affairs 
Matan Kahan, who stated on June 14, 2022, ‘‘If there 
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•HRES 388 IH 
was a button that could be pressed and all the Arabs 
could disappear—get on an express train to Switzerland, 
I would push it.’’, and as did Jerusalem city council 
member Yonatan Yosef, who led chants of, ‘‘We Want 
Nakba Now!’’ during a provocative march through occu-
pied Palestinian East Jerusalem on January 13, 2023; 
Whereas, on December 29, 2022, Israel formed its most ex-
tremist government to date, which includes in its cabinet 
Bezalel Smotrich, who previously stated to Palestinian 
citizens of Israel in Israel’s parliament, ‘‘You’re here by 
mistake, it’s a mistake that [Israeli Prime Minister 
David] Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and didn’t throw 
you out in 1948.’’; 
Whereas, after Israeli settlers committed a pogrom in the 
Palestinian West Bank village of Huwara on February 
26, 2023, in which settlers killed one Palestinian, injured 
more than 100 others, and set fire to hundreds of houses, 
Smotrich also stated on March 1, 2023, that ‘‘I think the 
[Palestinian] village of Huwara needs to be wiped out. I 
think the State of Israel should do it.’’; 
Whereas, since its formation, the current Israeli Government 
has intensified its violent military rule over the Pales-
tinian West Bank, has increased the scope of its illegal 
settlements there, has taken steps to de jure annex the 
Palestinian West Bank through the transfer of the Coor-
dinator of Government Activities in the Territories from 
military to civilian responsibility, and has advanced legis-
lation to undermine the independence of Israel’s judici-
ary; and 
Whereas the United States is complicit in Israel’s ongoing 
Nakba against the Palestinian people by providing Israel 
with weapons and diplomatic support even as it advances 
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•HRES 388 IH 
plans to destroy more Palestinian homes and forcibly re-
move more Palestinians from their land in places such as 
Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, and Masafer Yatta, and is also 
currently advancing plans to build a diplomatic facility in 
Jerusalem on land that Israel expropriated from Pales-
tinian refugees, including United States citizens: Now, 
therefore, be it 
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Rep-
resentatives that it is the policy of the United States to— 
(1) commemorate the Nakba through official 
recognition and remembrance; 
(2) reject efforts to enlist, engage, or otherwise 
associate the United States Government with denial 
of the Nakba; 
(3) encourage education and public under-
standing of the facts of the Nakba, including the 
United States role in the humanitarian relief effort 
and the relevance of the Nakba to the modern-day 
refugee crises; 
(4) continue to support the provision of social 
services to Palestine refugees through the United 
Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Ref-
ugees in the Near East; 
(5) support the implementation of Palestinian 
refugees’ rights as enshrined in United Nations Gen-
eral Assembly Resolution 194 and the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights; 
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•HRES 388 IH 
(6) condemn all manifestations of Israel’s ongo-
ing Nakba against the Palestinian people, includ-
ing— 
(A) Israel’s illegal theft of Palestinian land 
in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; 
(B) Israel’s displacement of Palestinians 
by destroying their homes and forcing them 
from their land; and 
(C) the daily brutality and violence in-
flicted by the Israeli military and Israeli settlers 
against Palestinian civilians; 
(7) request from the President the application 
of the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Preven-
tion Act of 2018 (Public Law 115–441) to the treat-
ment of Palestinians by Israel (both state and 
nonstate actors), including— 
(A) a report on the situation in the man-
dated annual reporting to the Congress; 
(B) training for United States Foreign 
Service Officers stationed in the United States 
Embassy to Israel per section 4 of such Act and 
section 4028(d) of title 22, United States Code; 
and 
(C) supporting and protecting Palestinian 
and Israeli civil society groups and human 
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