Our Nakba and their Independence
Palestinians flee from Gaza’s beaches onto boats during the Palestinian nakba, 1949. (Photo: UNRWA)
Dareen Tatour writes in Mondoweiss:
The anniversary of the Nakba comes every May. But we, the Palestinians of 1948, live in memory of the Nakba in different circumstances than all other Palestinians. Here from within Israel, we can hear the sirens declare the beginning of the celebration observed by those who occupied us while we are still deeply rooted inside of our homeland. We suffer because we feel alienated in our own country, we shout and scream and no one hears us.
Israel’s Independence Day is marked on May 9 this year, the holiday follows the Hebrew calendar. Israelis celebrate 71 years of independence with picnics, parties, and fireworks. Yet Palestinians, we mourn this day as our Nakba, or catastrophe in Arabic, the start of an ethnic cleaning, the destruction of our villages, and the creation of a refugee population. While international law regards Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands as only the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, many Palestinian citizens of Israel like myself regard ourselves as also living under occupation. Indeed, at the close of the 1948 war, Palestinian citizens of Israel lived under formal military occupation inside of Israel for two decades.
palestiniIsrael’s establishment occurred with the destruction of 531 Palestinian villages by Zionist militias and the early Israeli Defense Forces. In the Acre area, 30 villages were destroyed, 64 villages in Ramla district, 31 villages in Bisan, 88 villages near Beer Sheva 88 village, 46 villages in Gaza, 59 by Haifa, 16 in the Hebron are, 25 around Jaffa, 39 near Jerusalem, six by Jenin, five by Nazareth, 78 outside of Safad, 26 by Tiberias, and 18 in the Tulkarem area.
It is understandable then that another anniversary of the Nakba is commemorated as an anniversary of uprooting, displacement, terrorism and ethnic cleansing. It is 71 years of suffering, displacement and in the world and 71 years of international condemnation without a result. The Palestinian people are still one of a few people who lives as refugees in their homeland. There has been 71 years of deprived rights where our land was settled mostly by people who came from all over the world, claiming that Palestine was vacant in the 20th century slogan, “A land without a people for a people without a land.”
In memory of the Nakba …
Israelis celebrate their Independence Day, but it comes with celebrating the suffering of our ancestors, the displacement of our people and the memory of the massacres perpetrated against us over the years.
This victory that is celebrated is at the cost of what the Zionist movement did in what it calls its War of Independence: Zionist militias and later the IDF carried out around 70 massacres, in which around 15 thousands Palestinians were killed, and destroyed some 531 towns. More than 6,000 Israelis were killed in the fighting. In present day, just over the last weekend Israeli forces killed 24 in Gaza, and Palestinians killed 4 Israelis.
To date, all of Israel’s war have created a Palestinians refugee population of 7 million.