Commemorating Al Nakba
Today marks the 59th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba [i.e. The “Catastrophe”], the day in which around 750,000 of the original inhabitants of Palestine lost their homes and lives to become refugees in neighboring countries in the year 1948. In that day, 75% of the Arabic population of Palestine fled outside the conflict zone, a conflict that is commemorated by the Palestinians as a catastrophe and by the Israelis as a liberation war that ended with what was described as independence.
In a short period after the war ended in favor of the Jewish militias, the new-born Israelis destroyed more than 400 villages in which those refugees were living for thousands of years in an attempt to erase any non-Jewish appearance inside Palestine. Many of those villages and towns were rebuilt and resettled by Jews and the names of those villages and towns were changed from Arabic to Hebrew. It is worthy to quote Moshe Dyan describing the situation before and after that:
“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don’t blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the boooks not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu’a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”
[ Moshe Dyan, in Haifa, quoted by Ha’aretz, April, 4 1969. Reproduced by Ed Walid Khalidi in the book “All That Remains”]
 In 1950, the UNRWA was able to register 914,000 Palestinian as refugees from the same conflict. Today, the estimated number of the Palestinian refugees is around 4.4 millions registered in UNRWA with roughly 1.5 millions unregistered for multiple reasons, and another 770,000 displaced refugees after the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Most of the refugees today live in what can easily be described as inhumane lifestyles inside refugee camps that are located mainly inside Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the occupied Gaza Strip and The West Bank, and around the world.
The International community, represented by the United Nations, directly recognized the catastrophe and issued the famous 194 resolution in 11 December 1948 and kept reaffirming it every year ever since, the resolution stated on the following:
“..the [Palestinian] 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, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.” [source]
Israel, and since the day of its establishment, refused to abide by the International Law and refused to allow a single refugee to return to his home, every now and then, an Israeli official reassures to all the Palestinian refugees around the world that their right to return to their original homes will never be accepted by the Jewish state.
It remains unquestionable that for any Palestinian leadership the issue of the refugees lay on top of their priorities at any negotiations to take place; according to most Palestinians, the real Palestinian cause is the cause of the refugees, and judging by the everlasting Israeli stance from this cause, any negotiations that will not embrace a total just solution to the issue of the refugees will never see the light.
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I totally reject your attempt to paint this as an insider vs. outsider conflict, which is, in fact, a remnant of Soviet propaganda. This is what Ian Pacepa, former chief of Romanian intelligence under Nicolai Ceausescu, and staunch Cold War ally of the KGB, says about it:
Jews: have their own ancient, independent, institutions that originate from that land; use the indigenous language; have indigenous liturgical rites; practice a code of law developed there; directly trace their ethnic, tribal identity to there … and the list goes on. Jews can rattle off a list of spiritual leaders, songs, and stories from time immemorial that date directly to that land.
So let’s stop the counterproductive, outsider propaganda already.
Clearly the time has come to view this conflict as far more nuanced and socially intricate than you try to make it seem; and that peace needs to be made upon the notion that Jews belong there and that we have a right to defend our claims of being indigenous. It’s the only way forward. This way, a Palestinian state can be forged with an enfranchised Jewish minority and Israel can completely enfranchise its Arab minority — by recognizing that the conflict is about competing claims for a piece of land and not about foreign conquistadors victimizing aborigines either way.
What you are doing, Omar, enhances feelings of nationalism and rivalry. Jews never wanted to stomp on anyone. Go read the declarations of the First Zionist Congress. There was no blueprint to disaffect anyone. No attempt to harm. No desire to push Arabs off. No plan to aggrevate locals. There was no army. No guarantees from an armed force. Just a desire to live in their ancestral homeland where they could be allowed to be Jews. But conflict happens sometimes … many times … without a real purpose (can you say Sunni-Shia in Iraq?).
Do you hear me? CONFLICT HAPPENS sometimes. There were malleable borders. Moving populations. Crumbling empires. Promises and broken promises by European powers. New beliefs of the inalienable right to self-determination. Good L’rd, just stop the unproductive us vs. them game in this case, and focus on viable methods to move forward already. Get it? This is at least a 60 year old war and you want to focus on who is to blame for its origination? We’re wasting energy, and stressing ourselves out, by fighting shit that people started before our parents were even born. Dude. Can we all get any lamer?
PeacefulVanguard,
A huge smile is painted on my face right now! Dude, take a chill pill and relax.
What am I doing? very simple; I’m commemorating a disaster that took place on my people.
What’s behind my words? Also very simple; I’m telling the Israelis to wake up from their everlasting coma and realize that what they’re doing by cutting the road in front of any negotiation process that contains the word “refugees” in it will never get this region to the desired peace status. GET IT?
YOU can wake up today and look at this Nakba as an ancient story, a Goliath vs. David story that you look upon and smile, Palestinians don’t have this privilege of sleeping on it like you do! Don’t you get it? Millions of Palestinians are living under inhumane conditions, frustrated to points you will never understand, and guess what?! they’re not on Mars, they’re a few miles away from my very house!
Guess what? People were harmed, there was an army, people were disaffected, Arabs were pushed off, BIG TIME! and guess what? they were my people, my ancestors, and surprise surprise, they are still suffering until this very day from the consequences of what I wrote above.
Don’t open old wounds? is this what you’re trying to say? If that’s the case, then I’ll have to say one thing, it’s not an old wound for those millions in camps, the wounds are still fresh, once they’re given the bandage, I’ll be the first to look forward and start from scratch, I’ll start portraying it as “a far more nuanced and socially intricate” than I’m doing here.
Forgetting and overlooking the Nakba will most definitely be a huge favor to some, and a total disaster on others. Wake Up.
Omar, the problem you and all the others who declare “refugees must return home” have is you don’t understand two very big problems:
1)Socio-Political- has been discussed any number of times, to reiterate:Israel won’t give up the Jewish identity we hold so dear, and allowing every UNRWA refugee to be naturalized in Israel will have just that effect.Add in the fact many of these refugees have been spoon-fed hatred campaigns and propaganda about “Jews” and “Israel” for years and I hope you’ll understand why accepting them as citizens isn’t a viable option for any statesman or politician.
2)Purely logistical one:You want to raise the population of Israel by more then 50% in one fell stroke.Where do you expect them to live exactly?And how?Where are there jobs for them?How will the health system manage?And the education?both are groaning and overburdened as is.I know the easy answer many who hold that position give “let them return to where they once lived”.Well, as you mentioned *those places no longer exist* and even if they did I doubt they could hold a population which is 6 times as large as the one that left.
The narrative of “return the refugees home and everything will be alright” is both false and infuriating.The only thing it can achieve is to keep stopping peace talks in their tracks and serve as verbal incendiary to turn people from their inner problems to rage against Israel’s crimes(real and imagined).
And, yes- I acknowledge that Israel probably did several things that weren’t nice, clean or(very possibly) legal during 1948.But you know what?So did your ancestors- so please stop portraying them as martyrs and climb down from the moral “high ground” you claim to.Both sides to this aren’t nearly as white as the new driven snow, both sides took horrific wounds and inflicted them, both sides performed immoral deeds, both sides were, are and will stay human.
Oh, and I’d guess you know why those people are still in the camps, don’t you?Because the leaders of the Arab world won’t let them out.It’s easy to blame Israel for everything, but much Palestinian suffering can be layed at the feet of both Palestinian and other Arab leaders who keep people in the camps in the name of keeping the flame of hate for Israel burning.
Hmm and I guess you know who put them there in the first place, don’t you?
Number 1 is the issue for Jews in Israel, not number 2. Learn from India and Pakistan, 15 million people were exchanged. Integration happened pretty fast.
And refusing them only flames this spoon feeding. Keep digging that grave of yours.
Ohh so people wanting to go back to their home is infuriating to you? Now you know what is stopping the peace talks. Ohh also the expansionist policies also have nothing whatsoever to do with stalled peace talks. But just blame the fuckers int eh refugee camps who want to go back to their homes. Yup… perfect.
hahahahahhaahaaa… GOLD. What grade are you in? 1?
When you say both sides, are you talking about Israel’s neighbours and Israel or the Palestinians and Israel?
The refugees are not their problem nor should they be. Obey international law and let them in.
Arab leaders, ya that’s right. You know the same Arab leaders who act on Palestinians’ behalf without consulting them. And Israel punishes the Palestinians because… look what the OTHER ARABS DID TO US. It’s kinda like me going and killing someone and saying I am doing this for AntonGarou, and cops arrest you and put you in prison.
the same old story of blame game goes over and over …. here is what i think …. I think that maybe you are all talking facts or nonsense … but to me, that will never heal any wounds, so we
1- make everlasting peace
or
2- kill each other until the aliens comes from outter space and kill us all
if we stayed arguing about it .. then i would rather wait for the aliens !!
Wrong comparison, for two reasons:
a)In the India/Pakistan situation we’re talking about “exchange”- people moving from India to Pakistan were balancing the people moving from Pakistan to India, the final count probably wasn’t close to equal, but I’d risk a guess it wasn’t 15 million people either.Not so in the “right of return” scenario- there we’re talking about 4.4 million immigrants entering Israel without a large outflow balancing that huge inflow.
b)Even if we assume that at the end of the exchange India’s net immigration count was 15 million people, these 15 million were about 4% addition to the population of India at the time, not more than 50% addition.4% is high but can be dealt with, 50% is ruinous.
Yes, but that refusal also keeps them outside our borders where they have harder time reaching to us, not to mention that letting them in won’t break the programming that propaganda put into them.Sorry, but I’d rather not let a guy was taught I’m the devil personified into my home.
No.Coming to peace talks with demands designed to blow them sky high, on the other hand, does.I don’t have a problem with the desire these people have of returning to their home- I have a huge problem with the unrealistic expectations their leaders fostered that after 60 years they’ll be allowed to come back, even though said leaders know these demands are impossible from Israel’s POV.
Quote it all or quote nothing:
I’m simply tired of the Arab settlement of 1948 being portrayed as martyrs and saints.They were neither- nor was the Jewish settlement.If you want to find martyrs, saints or angels don’t look at the 1948 war.
The Palestinians, since they’re the people Omar was talking about.
A quote from the UNHCR, if I may?”International protection is ultimately oriented towards finding durable solutions for the protected individuals…” It continues to say that such solution may also be resettlement or “local integration”, i.e. resettlement in the place the refugees currently occupy.
I wasn’t talking about Israeli actions, rather I was referring to the popular perception that all the ills and woes of the Palestinian refugees can be attributed to them.To touch on your example it’s as if I would look at all the various woes in my life and blame everything on a certain rival.
Yes, but looking for the blame won’t help anyone.You want to devolve a bit backward in the blame game?The reason the war started was because the Arab settlement’s leaders decided that they didn’t want to accede to the UN’s division plan of 1947.Each and every cause can be traced back to it’s own parental cause ad nauseum, so please don’t start that old game again.
I am very much with you, Bashar.
The blame game is very counter-productive. Omar’s historical perspective and mine are very different. For him and others, it will always be Al Nakba. For me it will always be Independence Day - and that’s OK.
It isn’t unusual for groups to have competing views of the same event. In the North-East and Western parts of the US, America underwent a Civil War in the 19th century. But even to this day, there are many in the Southern parts who call it the War of Northern Aggression. And those competing historical perspectives don’t undermine the unity of the country.
We don’t have to let those competing perspectives become an obstacle for Palestinians to fully achieve their national aspirations and for Jews to fully achieve their national aspirations.
This grey area of “make peace as if there was no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there was no peace process” and the similar, albeit opposing, framework adopted by the Palestinian leadership, which has been the primary factor driving the see-saw results — peace today, murder tomorrow — that Israelis and Palestinians have lived with since the early days of Oslo has to change.
I like the “all in” perspective. Who wouldn’t want that kind of clarity? We’re either at war - and at war completely (and will let warfare determine the outcome) — or we’re making peace (and by that are entering into a negotiation where both sides walk away with an agreement that enables both the Palestinians and Israelis to thrive.
And as it just so happens, I watched the X-Files movie on tv this week. So the aliens are coming soon. They do not seem particularly friendly.
Apologies - it’s late. I realized that I didn’t finish my thought before posting. I wanted to suggest that the all-in perspective provides everyone with a lot of clarity, that makes decision-making very easy. That’s the value. We’re at war. We’re at peace. But the reality is much more complicated than that. Just as the historical perspective is far more complicated than just Al Nakba or Independence Day.
But just and practical solutions to the conflict exist. For what it’s worth, I still believe that we’re going to get there. It’s just a matter of when. And, unfortunately, how many lives on both sides will be lost in the meantime.
And to Bashar’s point, or at least my interpretation of it, we’re not going to get where we all want to go until we stop focusing on the kind of back-and-forth debates that are framed in such a way as to make people feel defensive.
For that reason, it is better to focus on the bright future that is a true possibility and the possible pathways to get their, rather than the past - which can not be changed.
AntonGarou,
The typical Zionist argument, Oh dear Lord!
but what the heck, let’s have another round,
1- Where did I exactly say “refugees must return now”? You’ve been excessively fed this propaganda of justifications to Al Nakba, so you simply decided to go for the typical cliches instead. I never said I want the Palestinians today to return home over night, IT’S THEIR RIGHT, but it’s not exactly feasible today; thanks to all the criminals from all sides who made it impossible today for those people to enjoy their most basic right, my words up there were:
“any negotiations that will not embrace a total just solution to the issue of the refugees will never see the light.”
And if you don’t see that by now, start digging your own grave.
2- I’m not playing the old blame game, I know exactly what my people did and why, the same as I know what your people did, the results today speak for themselves.
3- “And, yes- I acknowledge that Israel probably did several things that weren’t nice, clean or(very possibly) legal during 1948″ your use of words is simply disgusting.
4- “The narrative of “return the refugees home and everything will be alright†is both false and infuriating.”
But the Jews returning from all over the world claiming Palestine as their home after 3000 years, promoting that everything will go alright (actually promoting that everything did go alright!) is by no means infuriating?!
let’s cut to the chase, all what I’m trying to say here is this; we must reach a final agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis, the refugees issue is the number one priority to the Palestinians because of what I’ve presented above, the Israelis seem not to get that as they did for the past 60 years, a just and a total solution of the refugees issue can be implemented in a short period and it has been proposed many times; financial compensations to the majority with a complete right of entering Israel anytime they want and minority must return home for many reasons. This is actually what the UN 194 resolution stated, and this is what the Arabs have been claiming in the last period, but what was the Israeli response?
Why?Because I acknowledge that my people both made mistakes and wronged other people during 1948?
Omar, AFAIK prior to 1948 every square foot owned by Jews in this land was bought and paid for.Also, the narrative is “false” because it simply isn’t true from my perspective:if the refugees returned there would still be a myriad of problems- from the fact they probably will be rather hostile toward Jews to the Jerusalem problem.And the narrative is “infuriating” for me because as long as it is promoted it will be used as an excuse to come to the table with demands designed to blow talks sky high.
That I can agree with as a basis for the agreement.But that’s not what we hear from Hamas, Fatah and a myriad of other Palestinian organizations.The Arab leaders can jaw all they want but the fact of the matter is that what we hear from the Palestinians, who are the people who in the end must decide, is mostly along the lines of “All Israeli cities are illegal settlements” from the moderates and “Death to Israel!” from the hardliners.Not to mention that anyone who talks with Israel is immediately accused of “selling out”, and the fact that from the practical POV there is nobody to talk to since the Palestinians are currently fragmented along both political and clan lines with no one who is acknowledged as leader by everybody.
I want to be on Bashar’s team. The age-old arguments are no longer bargaining chips if keeping alive is important.
Omar & AntonGarou
you can go on and on with your arguments, which is pretty much justified if i put my feet in your shoes, but, unfortunately, its not going to be anywhere near productive as the situation remains as it is on the ground.
with all my respect to both of you, you simply remind me whenever having an argument with my girlfriend, that is sometimes endless and pointless at many cases
…. dont take it too personal, your both intelligent….but not too intelligent when it comes to results ….
Adam Harmon,
Thanks for your comment, couldn’t agree more. And I’ll have to stress once again on my point behind commemorating Al Nakba; I did so to highlight the importance of the refugees issue to the Palestinians, I presented the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948 from an Arab Palestinian perspective to stress once again on the dangerous outcomes of neglecting and marginalizing this issue from the Israeli side as we always witness, no final agreement will take place unless this particular issue is given the number one priority from both sides, I didn’t want to go into the old-aged blame game, believe me, I’ve had enough of it through my life.
Omar - I definitely understand your perspective and the importance of taking the needs of Palestinians living in refugee camps across the Middle East. Absolutely.
And I’m not purposely trying to be incendiary, but one of the things that honestly has been difficult for me to understand — which is why I mention it in this forum — is why the idea of enabling Palestinians around the world to make a home in a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza does not meet their needs.
I recognize that many of these people once lived in villages on the other side of the green line or are the descendants of people who once lived on the Israeli side of the green line. And that they have a deep and understandable desire to return to the village where they were born or where their grandparents lived, etc.
But what’s the point? Isn’t the goal to have a homeland for the Palestinian people? Just as successive Israeli governments — whether you agree with the Jewish “right” to the towns that they’ve built, lived in for generations, and perceive as being ancestral or not — have agreed to give up land that is held dear in order to live side by side in peace.
On both sides of the conflict, there exists a very deep connection to the land — on both sides of the conflict. But if we’re going to live together in peace, don’t we each have to give up on some of the things we want in order to attain the thing we need?
Israelis primarily want to live in peace with our neighbors.
Palestinians, I would expect, primarily want to get their people out of the camps and build a nation-state.
If that’s the case, shouldn’t Israelis give up on the dream of living in much of biblical Israel and Palestinians give up on the dream of returning to the villages of their youth. And both Israeli and Palestinian leaders focus on improving the quality of life of their respective citizens?
[…] Mideast Youth - Thinking Ahead » Blog Archive » Commemorating Al Nakba y Omar (Jordan) Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 […]
I do agree with you that the refugee situation is intolerable and must be resolved, but it has to be done in a way that brings both healing and justice rather than more resentment and backlash.
Let me explain …
Nowhere in the world are the offspring of refugees also forced to be refugees. Everywhere — from Africa to Asia to South America — the children of refugees are given a chance at a free life as a citizen somewhere; to be integrated and provided with an identity and sense of belonging so they can study, work, and live as human beings. However, Palestinians have been given a special dispensation by the international community to be warehoused by the UN in Arab League countries indefinitely. Of all the peoples in the world, only Palestinians have generation after generation of stateless refugees, caged permanently without any chance for their kids to have a future. This illegal maneuver to deny Palestinian offspring the same human rights everyone else gets is cruel and meant only to suit power politics.
In a nutshell, international law has been changed specifically to create a double standard in which Palestinians are indefinitely institutionalized for generations to live in squalid camps and you think it’s Israel’s job to accomodate it? Please explain to me the justice there. To say yes means that both Israelis and Palestinians fall outside of international rules of equality. That’s not the way forward.
If we agree that there should be one standard for the world’s refugees regardless of their identities, then Palestinians born after 1948 need to be given birth certificates in the country where they were born and allowed total liberation. After a Palestinian state is established, there is nothing stopping refugee children from moving there, but, in the meantime, at least they should be allowed the chance to make a positive contribution to themselves and a society somewhere. Don’t you want a society of educated, working Palestinians moving to Palestine one day rather than those with a permanent refugee/handout mentality who will be much more easily controlled by their neighbors? Think about it. Besides, you don’t really think the entire world has no room for the children of Palestinian refugees except for in Palestine, do you?
Let me try to clarify the average Palestinian perspective a little more,
The whole idea of creating the Palestinian state side by side with Israel is relatively new and is perceived as a non-feasible dream by most Palestinians, the reasons behind that are obvious, whether you see it or not, the apartheid wall and the settlements’ expansion polices inside the West Bank. The average Palestinian inside a refugee camp, say in Lebanon or Syria, has no faith in the possibility of establishing this state, how about moving to it? Add the fact that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are suffering from the worst economical problems in the world, 80% of Gaza citizens live in poverty! the rates of unemployment and poverty in the West Bank aren’t much better either, immigration applications from all sects are abundant, and as known to everyone, Gaza has the highest human density on earth. After the second Intifada, the infrastructure of the West Bank and Gaza was harshly devastated and cannot serve the current citizens.
Besides, there are already refugees in the West Bank and Gaza and they’re in hundreds of thousands.
In other words, unless the future Palestinian state is to be literally flooded with piles of money, moving 4.4 million people to this state will mark another Nakba, one that will devastate and destroy the Palestinians 10 times more than the first Nakba did!
The most feasible and fair solution to the issue, from my personal perspective, is the following;
fair financial compensations to all the refugees and a permission to enter the state of Israel any time they want.
Complete rights of citizenships must be granted to those refugees wherever they reside in the mean time.
A minority of the refugees must be granted the right to return to their original homes inside Israel.
The Palestinian state must be established in the near future with the apartheid wall and the settlements in the West Bank to be eliminated immediately.
Permission to enter the state of Israel any time they want? Permission to allow people who wish to destroy you into your home anytime they want? That makes no sense. If you want that AND a Palestinian state, what about the Jews who currently live in the West Bank. Should they be allowed to go to and from their homes in this new Palestinian country and Israel as well?
Omar,
A fair and honest question.
We could discuss why Israel would not want the solutions you provided, however…
Would there actually be Palestinians that would want to be Israeli citizens?
If they would be considered “Israeli”, would this go against their Palestinian identity they are working so hard to achieve?
What about those who are commited to Islam? Would this go against the cause of Ummah Islam- being a member of a nation that is the only ME nation not part of the Ummah?
Another quick question…
You live in Jordan… can you describe in detail Palestinian identity and culture as opposed to Jordanian identity and culture or as opposed to Saudi Arabian identity and culture?
Are you from Earth or Mars? Palestinians make up 25% of all Israeli population. Do you know that?
… are you serious? It’s like me asking you to identify the cultural differences between a French and an English. Just because they resemble one another with their skin colour, and in most cases even that is different, doesn’t mean they are the same. Palestinians I know can’t even understand anything when a Saudi Arabian speak. Just because they call their language “Arabic” and use the same script, doesn’t mean it’s the same language. It’s kind of like calling French, German, English etc the same language because they use the same script. Same applies to their culture and religion. Just because they are all Muslims, doesn’t mean they are culturally same.
Total ignorance and Euro-centric mentality is irritating.