Ranjan Solomon
Every year on May 15, Palestinians around the world, numbering about 12.4 million, commemorate what they classify as their Nakba, namely the “catastrophe” that followed the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society in 1948.
Only 4 days before, Israelis celebrated 71 years of the Jewish state. In a tragic turnaround, indigenous Palestinians who survived the ethnic cleansing of 1947-49 now live as second-class citizens of Israel or under its military rule, including in East Jerusalem, and the West Bank, and Gaza.
The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), which is the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society, encapsulated the divergent fortunes as follows: “Their Independence is our Nakba. The ethnic cleansing of 750,000 to one million indigenous Palestinians 70 years ago turning them into refugees to establish a Jewish-majority state in Palestine is no cause for celebration”.
The Palestinian experience of dispossession and loss of homeland is 71 years old today. As the world recalls this tragedy, Palestinians recall how they were forced to flee by a marauding army of Zionist Jews seeking to establish Jewish-majority state.
Between 1947-1949, Zionist forces captured over 78% of historic Palestine, ethnically cleansed and destroyed about 530 villages and cities, and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in a series of mass atrocities. The expulsion of at least 750,000 Palestinians from a 1.9 million population served as Israel’s foundation for a policy and practice of ethnic cleansing which, till today, has gone relentless.
The Nakba was not an inadvertent consequence of war. It was a conscious, methodical act to make possible the creation of a Jewish majority state in historic Palestine, which was overwhelmingly Arab prior to 1948. In order to whitewash the crime of ethnic cleansing, Zionist Jewish leaders referred to their brutal murders and stealth of land as a “transfer” rather than admit it to them as being ethnic cleansing.
It is worthwhile recalling that the Nakba itself derived from political Zionism in 19th century Europe, when some Jews, influenced by the nationalism then sweeping the continent, concluded that the remedy to centuries of anti-Semitic persecution in Europe and Russia was the creation of a nation state for Jews in Palestine and began emigrating as colonists to the Holy Land, dislodging indigenous Palestinians.
In November 1947, following the Nazi genocide of European Jews, the UN accepted a plan to partition Mandate Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. It was an unjust agreement which tore apart historic Palestine. The UN handed 55% of the land to the proposed Jewish state when, in fact, Zionist Jews had control over a mere 7% of private land in Palestine and constituted just 33% of the population, a large percentage of whom were recent immigrants from Europe.
The Palestinian Arab state was to be created on 42% of Mandate Palestine, with Jerusalem becoming an international city. This caused dismay and dissatisfaction and resulted in war.
Who was the UN to arbitrarily dissect Palestinian land? After a bitter, albeit one-seeded war, the new state of Israel was crested comprising 78% historic Palestine, with the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza, falling under the control of Jordan and Egypt, respectively. In the 1967 War, Israel occupied the remaining 22% was colonized. That, today, is occupied Palestine.
The Nakba did not end in 1948 and continues until today, in the form of the denial of the internationally-recognized legal right of return of millions of stateless Palestinian refugees. The BNC observes how the Nakba is not merely a crime of the past, it is ongoing. Beyond demolished Palestinian homes, revocation of residency rights, and denial of refugees their right to return to their homes, Israel even criminalizes Palestinian grief and denies them the right to commemorate the day as a day of mourning. Palestinians are defiant and steadfastly commemorate the tragedy by asserting their right to return home and live in freedom and dignity.
Today, week after week, tens and thousands of Palestinians in Gaza continue to take part in the Great March of Return, facing the Israeli military’s shoot-to-kill-or-maim policy. Palestinians refuse to be cowed down and risk their lives by asserting their rights. They call on people of conscience and communities around the world to support their efforts to stop Israeli crimes by swelling peaceful global campaigns. Their bottom line is that until Israel stops violating fundamental human rights, they will keep struggling. They aspire to the return of 7.1 million of Palestinian refugees and displaced persons including Nakba survivors to return to their homeland.
Palestinians are calling on people of conscience around the globe to be in solidarity with their struggle through campaigns urging governments and institutions to ban all trade with and divest from companies implicated in Israel’s illegal settlements and other violations of Palestinian human rights. They call for Israel’s isolation in the arenas of academics, culture, and sport, and to adopt a comprehensive military embargo against Israel, including a ban on collaborating in or sharing military research with Israel.
It is no longer possible for the world to stand by and watch in complicit silence as ruthless settler-colonialists embezzle and colonize Palestinian land and indulge in unceasing ethnic cleansing without evoking international sanctions. Israel’s genocidal apartheid practices must be uprooted because they are an expression of racist evil not commensurate with a civilized world.
