The Nakba Is A 75-Year-Old Story Awaiting Its Final Chapter – OpEd

On May 15, 2023, the Palestinian Nakba will be 75 years old. On this date, Palestinians all over the world will commemorate the tragic “catastrophe,” which saw nearly 800,000 Palestinians made refugees and nearly 500 towns and villages in historic Palestine ethnically cleansed of their inhabitants.

The depopulation of Palestine carried on for months — in fact, years — after the Nakba was supposedly concluded. But the Nakba has never actually ended. Until this day, Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem, in the southern Hebron Hills, in the Naqab desert and elsewhere are still suffering the consequences of Israel’s quest for demographic supremacy. And, of course, millions of refugees remain stateless, denied basic political and human rights.

In a speech to the UN World Conference against Racism in 2001, Palestinian intellectual Dr. Hanan Ashrawi aptly described the Palestinian people as “a nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing Nakba.” Elaborating, Ashrawi described this “ongoing Nakba” as “the most intricate and pervasive expression of persistent colonialism, apartheid, racism and victimization.” This means that we must not think of the Nakba only as an event in time and place.

Though the massive displacement of Palestinians in 1947-48 was a direct outcome of the Zionist ethnic cleansing campaign, as devised in “Plan Dalet,” that event officially ushered in a greater Nakba, which continues to this day. Plan Dalet, or Plan D, was initiated by the Zionist leadership and carried out by Zionist militias with the aim of emptying Palestine of most of its native inhabitants. It paved the way for decades of violence and suffering, the brunt of which was borne by the Palestinian people.

In fact, the current Israeli occupation and the entrenched apartheid regime in Palestine are not simply the intended or unintended outcomes of the Nakba, but are in fact the direct manifestations of a Nakba that never truly concluded.

It is widely acknowledged that Palestinian refugees, regardless of the specific events that triggered their forceful displacement, have “inalienable” rights under international law — even though they are sadly unfulfilled. UN General Assembly Resolution 194makes it legally impossible for Israel to flout these rights. This 1948 resolution states that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.” This must be carried out, according to the UN, by the “governments or authorities responsible.”

Since Israel is the government responsible, Tel Aviv quickly moved to shelter itself from any blame or responsibility. “Top secret” files retrieved by Israeli researchers, and reported in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2013, include one known as GL-18/17028. This document demonstrates how Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, attempted to “rewrite history” soon after the first and major phase of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine was completed. To achieve his aim, Ben-Gurion chose the most scandalous of all strategies: blaming the supposed flight of Palestinians on the victims themselves.

But why would the victorious Zionists concern themselves with seemingly trivial issues such as narratives? The Haaretz article pointed out: “Just as Zionism had forged a new narrative for the Jewish people within a few decades, (Ben-Gurion) understood that the other nation that had resided in the country before the advent of Zionism would also strive to formulate a narrative of its own.” This “other nation” is, of course, the Palestinian people.

The crux of the Zionist narrative on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine was, thus, predicated on the drummed-up claim that Palestinians had left “by choice,” even though it was becoming clear to the Zionists themselves that “only in a handful of cases did villages leave at the instructions of their (local) leaders or mukhtars,” as Haaretz reported.

However, even in these few isolated cases, seeking safety elsewhere during times of war is not an offense and should not cost a refugee their inalienable rights. If such bizarre Zionist logic was the standard in international law, then refugees from Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Sudan and all other war zones would have lost their legal rights to their property and to citizenship in their respective homelands.

But the Zionist logic was not intended just to challenge the Palestinian people’s legal or political rights. It was part and parcel of a greater process known to Palestinian intellectuals as erasure: The systematic destruction of Palestine, including its history, culture, language, memory and, of course, people. This process was reflected in early Zionist discourses, even decades before Palestine was emptied of its inhabitants, with the homeland of the Palestinian people maliciously perceived as a “land without a people.”

The denial of the very existence of the Palestinians was expressed numerous times in Zionist discourse and it continues to be employed to this day.

All of this means that 75 years of an ongoing Nakba, and the denial of the existence of this enormous crime by Israel and its supporters, requires a much deeper understanding of what has happened to — and continues to befall — the Palestinian people.

Palestinians must insist that the Nakba is not a single political point to be discussed with Israel or bargained away by those claiming to represent the Palestinian people. “The Palestinians have no moral or legal obligation to accommodate Israelis at their own expense. By any standards, Israel has such an obligation — to correct the monumental injustice it has committed,” wrote famed Palestinian historian Salman Abu Sitta, in reference to the Nakba and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Indeed, the Nakba is an all-encompassing Palestinian story of the past, present and also the future. It is not only a story of victimization, but also of Palestinian “sumoud” (steadfastness) and resistance. It is the single most unifying platform that brings all Palestinians together, beyond the restrictions of factions, politics or geography.

For Palestinians, the Nakba is not a single date. It is the whole story, the conclusion of which will be written — this time — by the Palestinians themselves.