JERUSALEM (AFP) -- An Israeli NGO is on Monday launching a smartphone app that allows users to find the remains of Palestinian villages that now lie inside modern-day Israel. The launch is timed to coincide with Israel's 66th independence day, which begins at sundown, when the Palestinians remember the "Nakba" or "catastrophe" that befell them when Israel came into existence in 1948, and 760,000 of them fled or were forced into exile. "iNakba" features an interactive map and photos of buildings and houses that Palestinians fled or were driven out of during the conflict surrounding Israel's creation in 1948. "Many Palestinians have difficulty locating their home towns and villages (in Israel and the West Bank), because cities or Jewish settlements have been built on top of them," said Raneen Jeries of Zochrot, the NGO that developed the app. "There's a file on each of hundreds of Palestinian villages or cities, and you can fi...

In a run-down office in the busy centre of Tel Aviv, a group of Israelis are finalising preparations for this year's independence day holiday. But their conversation – switching between Arabic and Hebrew – centres not on celebrating the historic realisation of the Zionist dream in May 1948, but on the other side of the coin: the flight, expulsion and dispossession that Palestinians call their catastrophe – the Nakba. Maps, leaflets and posters explain the work of Zochrot – Hebrew for "Remembering". The organisation's mission is to educate Israeli Jews about a history that has been obscured by enmity, propaganda and denial for much of the last 66 years. Next week, Zochrot, whose activists include Jews and Palestinians, will connect the bitterly contested past with the hi-tech present. Its I-Nakba phone app will allow users to locate any Arab village that was abandoned during the 1948 war on an interactive map, learn about its history (including, in many cases, the J...