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href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-latest-attempt-erase-palestine/27941">https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-latest-attempt-erase-palestine/27941</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Israel's latest attempt to erase
Palestine</h1>
<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ilan-pappe">Ilan
Pappe</a></span> <span class="field field-publisher">-</span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single"
content="2019-07-25T12:52:00+00:00">25 July 2019</span></span>
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<article>
<figure id="file-81726"><source media="(min-width:
72rem)"><figcaption><small><span></span></small></figcaption></figure>
<p>The attempt to suppress official documentation of the
ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 is not new.</p>
<p>But efforts by teams from the Israeli defense
ministry to remove sensitive documents from Israeli
archives – as <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-how-israel-systematically-hides-evidence-of-1948-expulsion-of-arabs-1.7435103">reported</a>
by the <em>Haaretz</em> newspaper recently – must be
understood in a new political climate and are not
simply an attempt to spare Israeli governments
embarrassment, as some have suggested.</p>
<p>Those of us working with Nakba documents – Nakba
means “catastrophe” and is the term Palestinians use
for the expulsion in 1948 of some 800,000 people from
their lands and homes in what became Israel – were
already aware of the removal of these documents. For
many years, for instance, historians were unable to
revisit “the village files,” which formed an important
proof in my argument that the 1948 war was an act of
ethnic cleansing.</p>
<p>Some of the crucial material Benny Morris used on the
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/deir-yassin-massacre">Deir
Yassin</a> and <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/al-dawayima">al-Dawayima</a>
massacres could also not be not <a
href="https://mondoweiss.net/2019/07/reveals-israeli-conspiracy/">re-opened</a>.
They all detailed a more honest Israeli version of the
causes leading to what was termed the “Palestinian
exodus” in 1948.</p>
<p>Why are these files being hidden? In 2016, the
journalist Lisa Goldman <a
href="https://972mag.com/classified-politicizing-the-nakba-in-israels-state-archives/117216/">assumed</a>
that the reason was that the works of the “new
historians” embarrassed the government and undermined
Israel’s international standing.</p>
<p>The documents certainly challenged the official
Israeli version of a voluntary Palestinian flight and
exposed war crimes committed by Zionist and later
Israeli forces.</p>
<p>But I think the reasons are far more profound and
alarming. They are part of a new assault on Palestine
and the Palestinians.</p>
<h2>Taking the politics out of Palestine</h2>
<p>We need to look at the attempt at censoring these
archives in two contexts: the political and the
historical.</p>
<p>Politically, the removal of these documents has to be
seen as part of an overall American-Israeli initiative
(or at least tendency) to try to depoliticize the
“Palestine question.”</p>
<p>In Israel, this began with Benjamin Netanyahu’s ideas
about an “economic peace,” the <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/1.5061173">attempt</a>
to induce the Palestinians to give up their political
demands in return for an improved economic reality.</p>
<p>It continued with the legislation of the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/nakba-law">Nakba
Law</a>, which withdrew any government funding for
public bodies and institutions that would commemorate
the 1948 events as a catastrophe.</p>
<p>An important part of this strategy includes Israeli
actions on the ground – <a
href="https://peacenow.org.il/en/annual-settlement-report-2018">settlement
expansion</a>, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israeli-rampage-destruction-jerusalem-village">house
demolitions</a>, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/will-icc-probe-israels-demolition-khan-al-ahmar">village
clearances</a> – that bring us closer to an official
annexation of Area C – approximately 60 percent of the
West Bank – into Israel and the establishment of small
Bantustans in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>A number of Israeli politicians and officials have
been quite open about wanting to annex all or parts of
the West Bank, including, of course, the <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/07/netanyahu-vows-to-annexe-jewish-settlements-in-occupied-west-bank">prime
minister himself</a>.</p>
<p>Finally, there is the Israeli <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/nation-state-law">nation-state
law</a>, which passed in 2018. This law consolidated
Israel as an apartheid state.</p>
<p>One particular clause in the law is relevant to our
discussion: it stipulates that the right to exercise
national self-determination in the country is “unique”
to the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-passes-law-entrenching-apartheid">Jewish
people</a>.</p>
<p>On the American side, meanwhile, the Trump
administration has taken a number of steps that
complement the Israeli attempt to erase Palestine as a
political issue and Palestinians as a national
movement.</p>
<p>These measures included the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/oh-jerusalem-requiem-two-state-solution/22521">recognition
of Jerusalem</a> as Israel’s capital and the
transfer there of the US embassy from Tel Aviv; <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/trump-targets-sick-palestinians">ending</a>
financial support for UNRWA, the UN body that caters
for Palestinian refugees; <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-palestinians/us-state-department-revokes-plo-ambassador-family-visas-envoy-idUSKCN1LW0RE">removing</a>
the PLO delegation from Washington; and a <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/omar-karmi/ultimate-deal-not-meant-work">Bahrain
conference</a> focused on financial incentives for
the Palestinians with no mention of any political
rights.</p>
<p>Together, the Israeli and American campaigns amount
to a new assault on Palestine and the Palestinians.
The Palestinians are very vulnerable at this moment:
Arab regimes are deserting them, the international
community’s elite is indifferent, and Palestinians
themselves are divided between Hamas and Fatah.</p>
<h2>Eliminating the native</h2>
<p>Israeli and American intentions combined with the
vulnerability of the Palestinians bring us to a
dangerous historical juncture. Israel is now in a
position to attempt once more to act according to the
logic of the “elimination of the native” (the
anthropologist Patrick Wolfe’s <a
href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/14623520601056240">characterization</a>
of the motives behind setter colonial movements such
as Zionism).</p>
<p>Israel succeeded only partly in implementing this aim
in 1948. The Palestinian national movement and people
struggled succesfully then, and continue to struggle
now, against the completion of the ethnic cleansing of
1948.</p>
<p>But this is a difficult moment. Abroad, efforts to
shield Israel from criticism have intensified.</p>
<p>Pro-Palestinian politicians <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/jewish-labour-movement-was-refounded-fight-corbyn">are
defamed</a> as anti-Semites. Legislation is being
introduced in different countries to protect Israel
from <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israels-bogus-definition-anti-semitism-shuts-down-free-speech/25471">criticism</a>
and <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/u-s-house-passes-anti-bds-resolution-in-bipartisan-vote-1.7568292">activism</a>,
including boycotts.</p>
<p>Removing archival material and the possible
destruction of documents expose the deeper ideological
motives behind this current assault on Palestine and
the Palestinians.</p>
<p>How much has this undermined our ability to
reconstruct what happened in the Nakba and for
assessing its significance today?</p>
<p>In many ways, we have been here before. Israel <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/01/world/israeli-looted-archives-of-plo-officials-say.html">looted</a>
the PLO archives in October 1982, destroyed part of
them, <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-why-are-palestinian-photos-and-films-buried-in-israeli-archives-1.5490325">transferred</a>
some of them to Israel and returned a small portion.</p>
<p>In 2001, Israel raided the Orient House in East
Jerusalem and <a
href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/jq-articles/13_Editorial_2.pdf">stole</a>
the archives there.</p>
<p>Now Israel raids its own archives to cleanse them of
evidence of its past crimes.</p>
<p>Will this damage our ability to reconstruct the past?</p>
<p>In one way, no. The Palestinian refugees after 1948
did not need Israeli “new historians” to tell them
that they were victims of ethnic cleansing.</p>
<p>Archival evidence is needed, though, to expose the
intent and planning behind the crime and for
contextualizing the past within a wider understanding
of the nature of the Zionist movement and Israel.</p>
<p>For both purposes, documents already seen, and in
many cases already scanned and digitized for
posterity, are enough to prove beyond doubt the
Zionist ideological intent behind the attempt to
eliminate the Palestinians in 1948 and after.</p>
<p>While there is no one “smoking gun” document proving
the full intent behind the ethnic cleansing –
although, as the scholar Walid Khalidi <a
href="http://pbble.com/doc/Khalidi-Plan-Dalet.pdf">commented</a>,
a paper known as Plan D came very close – there are
enough discrete documents that together expose the
crime against humanity Israel committed against the
Palestinians.</p>
<h2>Erasing Palestine</h2>
<p>As we move forward in time, from 1948 on, the
information is more accessible and any attempt to
destroy or hide it is bound to fail. Students,
historians, pundits and activists can see very clearly
the pattern of violence Israel inflicted and continues
to inflict on the Palestinians (in this respect, one
is reminded of another <a
href="https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3437-forum-on-patrick-wolfe">remark</a>
by Patrick Wolfe that settler colonialism is not an
event but a structure).</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the origins of this structural violence
is in the Nakba and therefore its documentation is
important. It is this origin that explains Israeli
policies since 1948: the imposition of military rule
on Palestinians inside Israel until 1966 and its
transition onto the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip
in 1967; the Judaization policy of expropriation of
land and displacement in the Galilee, the Jerusalem
area and the Naqab (Negev); the brutal repression of
the two intifadas; the destruction of southern Lebanon
in 1982 and 2006 and finally the inhuman siege on
Gaza.</p>
<p>All these criminal policies can be proven without
declassifying Israeli documents but are better
historicized and contextualized if supported by
documentation that show how – in the case of Israel –
the “logic of elimination of the native” was being
implemented.</p>
<p>We need to accumulate and present clearly what I
would call indicative documents, which are very near
to a “smoking gun” proof of the intention, inhumanity
and purpose of the 1948 ethnic cleansing. I have
displayed several of these documents on my public <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/pappeIlan/">Facebook
page</a>, but we need proper archives that can be
safeguarded from a state and an international
coalition that wants to erase Palestine from our
historical memory and to diminish it into an economic
question.</p>
<p>This is not the first nor will it be the last attempt
to erase Palestine. Sometimes these attempts are
hidden from the eye but are nonetheless are highly
significant and can only be traced by professional
historiography.</p>
<p>In March 1964, Israel demanded that American citizens
who had passports issued with the designation
“Palestine” would be issued with new passports without
that designation. The US State Department complied.</p>
<p>“We will cease using ‘Palestine’ in passports as
place of assignment and cease issuing, renewing, or
amending passports with seal bearing word
‘Palestine’,” a <a
href="https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v18/d30">telegram</a>
informed the US embassy in Tel Aviv.</p>
<p>But Palestine is not designation, and not a place of
assignment that exists only in archives, open or
closed. It is a real country, under colonization and
occupation.</p>
<p>We should all strive to continue to tell its history
as it explains the present and influences our future.</p>
<p><em>The author of numerous books, Ilan Pappe is
professor of history and director of the European
Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of
Exeter.</em></p>
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