[News] Erasure vs. Sumud: How the Nakba Came to Define the Collective Palestinian Identity

[Anti-Imperialist News]

counterpunch.org
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/28/erasure-vs-sumud-how-the-nakba-came-to-define-the-collective-palestinian-identity/>
Erasure vs. Sumud: How the Nakba Came to Define the Collective Palestinian
Identity
Ramzy Baroud
April 28, 2023
------------------------------

On May 15, 2023, the Palestinian Nakba will be 75 years old.

Palestinians all over the world will commemorate the tragic occasion, known
as the ‘Catastrophe’, when nearly 800,000 Palestinians were made refugees
and nearly 500 towns and villages were ethnically cleansed
<https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1650102> of their inhabitants in
historic Palestine between late 1947 and mid-1948.

The depopulation of Palestine carried on for months; in fact, years after
the Nakba was supposedly concluded. But the Nakba has never actually
concluded. Until this day, Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem, in
the southern Hebron hills, in the Naqab Desert and elsewhere, are still
suffering <https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees> 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 before the ‘UN World Conference against Racism’ in 2001,
Palestinian intellectual, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi aptly described
<https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/459247?ln=en> 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 influx of refugees in 1947-48 was a direct outcome of
the Zionist ethnic cleansing campaign as devised
<https://www.jstor.org/stable/2537591> in ‘Plan Dalet’, that event had
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 the Zionist militias with the aim of emptying Palestine of most of its
native inhabitants. They did so successfully, while paving 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 entrenched racial apartheid
regime
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/>
in Palestine are not simply the intended or unintended outcomes of the
Nakba, but direct manifestations of a Nakba that never truly concluded.

It is widely acknowledged, though sadly unfulfilled, that Palestinian
refugees, regardless of the specific events which triggered their forceful
displacement, have ‘inalienable’ rights under international law. United
Nations Resolution 194 makes it legally impossible for Israel to flout
these rights.

Indeed, UNGA Res. 194 (III) <https://www.refworld.org/docid/4fe2e5672.html>
of 1948 resolved 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
“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
<https://www.haaretz.com/2013-05-16/ty-article/.premium/ben-gurion-grasped-the-nakbas-importance/0000017f-e12d-d38f-a57f-e77fcfdd0000>
in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, include a file named GL-18/17028. The
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 Palestinian victims themselves.

But why would the victorious Zionists concern themselves with seemingly
trivial issues as narratives?

“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,” Haaretz wrote
<https://www.haaretz.com/2013-05-16/ty-article/.premium/ben-gurion-grasped-the-nakbas-importance/0000017f-e12d-d38f-a57f-e77fcfdd0000>.
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*.”

However, even in these few isolated cases, seeking safety elsewhere during
times of war is still not an offense, and should not cost a refugee his/her
inalienable right. If the bizarre Zionist logic becomes the standard in
international law, then refugees from Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Sudan and all
other war zones would lose 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
<https://www.alhaq.org/publications/19542.html>: the systematic destruction
of Palestine, 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, where the homeland
of the Palestinian people was maliciously perceived as a “land without a
people”.

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

All of this means that 75 years of an ongoing Nakba and the denial of the
very existence of the enormous crime by Israel and its supporters require a
much deeper understanding of what has fallen – 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
<https://www.plands.org/en/articles-speeches/articles/1997/the-feasibility-of-the-right-of-return>
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 but also the future. It is not only a story of victimization, but
also of Palestinian *sumud* – 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.

*Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He
is the author of five books. His latest is “**These Chains Will Be Broken*
<https://www.amazon.com/These-Chains-Will-Broken-Palestinian/dp/1949762092>*:
Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity
Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the
Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU).
His website is **www.ramzybaroud.net* <http://www.ramzybaroud.net/>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230428/62d61af9/attachment.htm>