Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Friday marked the 61st anniversary of the Naqba, the "catastrophe" they see in the 1948 creation of Israel that sparked an exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees.

IN MAY 1948, during al Naqba when hundreds of thousands were killed in ethnic cleansing and 800,000 became refugees after their villages and cities were destroyed. Here, Palestinians march with raised hands during the surrender of the town of Ramle.

Thousands gathered in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza waving Palestinians flags and green banners of the Islamist Hamas movement which seized power in the impoverished enclave in 2007.

Some protestors held up placards with names of villages demolished by Israeli forces during the 1948 war.

"We will return to Jaffa and to all our lands," cried some, referring to an Arab town on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, some 60 kilometres (35 miles) north of Gaza.

"We will not recognise Israel," others shouted, as one banner proclaimed: "Israel is a cancerous entity which owes its creation to terrorism and injustice."

Last December, Israel began a devastating 22-day offensive against Gaza that ended in January and during which 1,400 Palestinians -- most of them civilians according to Palestinian medics -- were killed and thousands of homes destroyed.

Senior Hamas official Ahmad Bahar told the crowd that the Palestinian people "will never give up the right of return" to their homes and land in Israel.

At a rally on May 15, marking the Naqba in the West Bank city of Ramallah, a Palestinian woman with the key of her former house.

He also criticised Pope Benedict XVI for not visiting the Gaza Strip during his five day visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank which ended on Friday.

"We tell the pope 'why didn't you come to Gaza to see our Holocaust?' He used double standard by supporting the occupier without taking into account the suffering of the Palestinian people," Bahar said.

The pontiff visited the Aida refugee camp outside the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Thursday, where he expressed deep sympathy with refugees.

"With anguish, I have witnessed the situation of refugees who, like the Holy Family, have had to flee their homes," he said.

Around 700,000 people were exiled in this way in 1948, with the United Nations estimating that today they and their decendants number 4.6 million, of which one million live in Gaza.

Hamas on Thursday prevented president Mahmud Abbas's Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) from holding any event to mark the Naqba in the tiny territory.

The Islamists and Abbas's secular rivals have been at loggerheads since June 2007, when Hamas forced pro-Abbas forces out of Gaza, splitting the Palestinian territories into two entities.

Israel clamped a tough blockade on the impoverished strip after the Hamas takeover, and tightened it even further following the December/January war.

During his visit to the Holy Land, the pope called for the lifting of Israel's crippling blockade.