[News] The Nakba at 72: A Legacy of Settler-Colonialism & Apartheid over the Palestinian People

Fri May 15 10:30:26 EDT 2020

https://mailchi.mp/22b59d52fd5a/the-nakba-at-72-a-legacy-of-settler-colonialism-apartheid-over-the-palestinian-people-3206790?e=08c14cf485
The
Nakba at 72: A Legacy of Settler-Colonialism & Apartheid over the
Palestinian People
May 15, 2020
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Seventy-two years have passed since the Palestinian people were forcibly
expelled from their homes, lands, and property in Palestine during the
Nakba or ‘catastrophe’ which started in 1948. Palestinian society was
decimated during the Nakba
<https://today.visualizingpalestine.org/?blm_aid=8507392>, 531 Palestinian
villages were destroyed, while Zionist militias carried out more than 70
massacres in which more than 15 thousand Palestinians were killed between
1947 and 1949.[i] Some two-thirds of the Palestinian people became refugees
in and around 1948 and a quarter of those who remained were internally
displaced following the war, denied their right of return to their
villages, towns, and cities of origin ever since. Yet, the Nakba’s colonial
legacy lives on.[ii] At 72, the Nakba is far from a distant memory for the
Palestinian people: it is an ongoing reality of Israeli
settler-colonialism, population transfer, apartheid, and dispossession,
policies which have never ended and continue to be entrenched today.[iii]

In the immediate aftermath of the Nakba, Israel adopted a series of laws,
policies, and practices, which sealed the dispossession of the indigenous
Palestinian people, systematically denying the return of Palestinian
refugees and other Palestinians who were abroad at the time of the war,
while escalating Palestinian dispossession and imposing a system of
institutionalised racial discrimination over Palestinians who remained in
the land, many of whom had been internally displaced. The 1950 Absentee
Property Law became the main legal instrument of dispossession and was used
by Israel to confiscate the property of Palestinian refugees and displaced
persons, who were deemed ‘absentees’ despite the State denying their
return. Seventy years after its adoption, the Absentee Property Law
continues to be used to advance the Judaisation of the city of Jerusalem
and to alter its Palestinian character, demographic composition, and
identity.[iv]

In turn, the 1950 Law of Return and the 1952 Citizenship Law cemented
Israel’s institutionalised racial discrimination in law. Establishing
domination, both in law and in practice, Israel granted every Jew the
exclusive right to enter the State as an immigrant and to obtain
citizenship, while Palestinian refugees have been categorically denied
their right of return, to the homes, lands, and property from which they
were illegally dispossessed, as mandated by international law. These
Israeli laws form the legal foundation of Israel’s settler-colonialism and
apartheid regime of systematic racial domination and oppression over all
Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line and as refugees and exiles
abroad. Seven decades since, Israel continues to impose its apartheid
regime by entrenching the erasure and dispossession of the indigenous
Palestinian people, while ruthlessly fragmenting, segregating, and
isolating Palestinians legally, politically, and geographically in order to
ensure Israeli-Jewish domination.[v]

As we mark 72 years since the Nakba, the Israeli government’s plan to move
forward with *de jure* annexation of parts of the West Bank will become
another strategic milestone in Israel’s settler-colonial project in
historic Palestine, consisting of continued land grab, pillage, and
displacement of Palestinians through the maintenance of Israel’s apartheid
regime. As recently warned by Professor Michael Lynk, the United Nations
(UN) Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian
territory occupied since 1967, Israel’s annexation plans “would crystalize
a 21st century apartheid, leaving in its wake the demise of the
Palestinians’ right to self-determination. Legally, morally, politically,
this is entirely unacceptable.”[vi]

The crimes of the Nakba, including the expulsion of Palestinian refugees,
extensive destruction of Palestinian property, mass killing, and the
prolonged denial of Palestinian refugee return, have never been prosecuted
or remedied.

Just two years ago, the Israeli occupying forces carried out the mass
killing of some 60 unarmed Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip at the
eve of the 70th Nakba commemoration.[vii] It is the injustices of the Nakba
and the ongoing denial of the right of return that led to the Great Return
March demonstrations over nearly two years in Gaza and it is the continued
failure to ensure justice and accountability that has given Israel a
greenlight to kill with impunity. The international community has
consistently failed to hold Israel to account, despite clear tools at its
disposal to put an end to this injustice.

Today, States must guarantee international justice and accountability by
supporting a full and thorough investigation by the International Criminal
Court (ICC) into the Situation in Palestine.[viii] The Court is competent
to investigate the crimes of population transfer, extensive destruction of
property, apartheid,and has a responsibility to deliver justice to
Palestinian victims. At this critical juncture in the Palestinian struggle
for self-determination, which includes the right of return, support is also
needed for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the
Near East (UNWRA) until a durable solution to the Palestinian refugee
question, based on the realisation of the Palestinian people’s inalienable
rights under international law, is achieved.

Seventy-two years on, the Nakba has come to symbolise the ongoing
oppression of the Palestinian people through Israel’s racist colonial rule,

implemented through an apartheid regime over all Palestinians, which
continues to be entrenched. On Nakba Day, we call on civil society
organisations and state representatives from around the world to take
effective legal and political measures to eradicate colonialism, to bring
perpetrators of suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity to justice
at the ICC, and to publicly recognise and collectively overcome Israel’s
apartheid regime imposed over the Palestinian people as a whole.

*See how the Nakba has transformed Palestine since 1948 with this map by
Visualizing Palestine marking the Nakba at 72: *
*https://today.visualizingpalestine.org/?blm_aid=8507392*
<https://today.visualizingpalestine.org/?blm_aid=8507392>*.*
*Signatory organisations:*

   - Members of the Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC),
   including:
      - Al-Haq – Law in the Service of Mankind
      - Al Mezan Center for Human Rights
      - Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
      - Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR)
      - Defense for Children International Palestine (DCIP)
      - Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC)
      - Aldameer Association for Human Rights
      - Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies (RCHRS)
      - Hurryyat – Center for Defense of Liberties and Civil Rights
      - The Independent Commission for Human Rights (Ombudsman Office) –
      Observer Member
      - Muwatin Institute for Democracy and Human Rights – Observer Member
   - Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO)
   - Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem (CCPRJ)
   - Community Action Center (Al-Quds University)
   - The Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD)
   - Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)
   - Habitat International Coalition – Housing and Land Rights Network
   (HIC-HLRN)

------------------------------

[ii] Rania Muhareb, “The Nakba 70 Years On: Israel’s Failure to Erase
Palestinian Collective Memory” Al-Haq (15 May 2018), available at:
http://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/6215.html.

[iv] Al-Haq, “Palestinian, regional, and international groups submit report
on Israeli apartheid to UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination,” (12 November 2019), p. 10, available at:
http://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/16183.html.

[v]* Ibid.*, p. 8.

[vii] Al-Haq, “‘Bloody Monday’ – Documentation of the Shoot-to-kill,
Egregious Killings Committed by the Israel Occupying Force (IOF) on 14 May
2018,” (26 May 2018), available at: http://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/6196.html.

[viii] *See *Al-Haq, “Al-Haq Publishes Q&A on the Situation in the State of
Palestine at the International Criminal Court,” (29 April 2020), available
at: http://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/16792.html. *See also* Al-Haq,
“Palestinian Human Rights Organisations Publish Detailed Review Paper on
Submissions Made to International Criminal Court on Territorial
Jurisdiction,” (29 April 2020), available at:
http://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/16796.html.
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