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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221212-the-nakba-day-triumph-how-the-un-is-correcting-a-historical-wrong/">middleeastmonitor.com</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">The Nakba Day triumph: How the UN is correcting a historical wrong</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Dr Ramzy Baroud - December 12, 2022</div></div>
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<img src="cid:ii_lblkp26p0" alt="image.png" width="392" height="261"><br><p>The next Nakba Day will be officially commemorated by the United
Nations General Assembly on 15 May, 2023. The decision by the world's
largest democratic institution is significant, if not a game changer.</p>
<p>For nearly 75 years, the Palestinian <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/5/19/nakba-the-man-reconstructing-palestines-lost-villages" target="_blank">Nakba</a>,
the 'Catastrophe' wrought by the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by
Zionist militias in 1947-48, has served as the epicentre of the
Palestinian tragedy as well as the collective Palestinian struggle for
freedom.</p>
<p>Three decades ago, namely after the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo" target="_blank">signing</a>
of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian leadership in
1993, the Nakba practically ceased to exist as a relevant political
variable. Palestinians were urged to move past that date, and to invest
their energies and political capital in an alternative and more
'practical' goal, a return to the 1967 borders.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_261670" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/20150515_Latuff-Nakba-Day-1948-2015.gif?resize=268%2C333&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1" alt="Nakba Day 1948 - Cartoon [Latuff/MiddleEastMonitor]" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" width="268" height="333"></p><p class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Nakba Day 1948 – Cartoon [Carlos Latuff/MiddleEastMonitor]</p></div><p>In June 1967, Israel <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/6/4/the-naksa-how-israel-occupied-the-whole-of-palestine-in-1967" target="_blank">occupied</a> the rest of historic Palestine – East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza – igniting yet another wave of ethnic cleansing.</p>
<p>Based on these two dates, Western cheerleaders of Oslo divided
Palestinians into two camps: the 'extremists' who insisted on the
centrality of the 1948 Nakba, and the 'moderates' who agreed to shift
the centre of gravity of Palestinian history and politics to 1967.</p>
<p>Such historical revisionism impacted every aspect of the Palestinian
struggle: it splintered Palestinians ideologically and politically;
relegated the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees, which is
enshrined in UN Resolution 194; spared Israel the legal and moral
accountability of its violent establishment on the ruins of Palestine,
and more.</p>
<p>Leading Palestinian Nakba historian, Salman Abu Sitta, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/5/19/nakba-the-man-reconstructing-palestines-lost-villages" target="_blank">explained</a>
in an interview a few years ago the difference between the so-called
pragmatic politics of Oslo and the collective struggle of Palestinians
as the difference between 'aims' and 'rights'. Palestinians "don't have
'aims' … (but) rights," he said. "… These rights are inalienable; they
represent the bottom red line beyond which no concession is possible.
Because doing so will destroy their life."</p>
<p>Indeed, shifting the historical centrality of the narrative away from
the Nakba was equivalent to the very destruction of the lives of
Palestinian refugees as it has been tragically apparent in Gaza, Lebanon
and Syria in recent years.</p>
<p><strong>READ: <a title="Arabs in Yafa protest against Israel's plans to evict 1,400 Arab citizens" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221119-arabs-in-yafa-protest-against-israels-plans-to-evict-1400-arab-citizens/">Arabs in Yafa protest against Israel's plans to evict 1,400 Arab citizens</a></strong></p>
<p>While politicians from all relevant sides continued to bemoan the
'stagnant' or even 'dead' peace process – often blaming one another for
that supposed calamity – a different kind of conflict was taking place.
On the one hand, ordinary Palestinians along with their historians and
intellectuals fought to reassert the importance of the Nakba, while
Israelis continued to almost completely ignore the earth-shattering
event, as if it is of no consequence to the equally tragic present.</p>
<p>Gaza's '<a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/document/two-years-on-people-injured-and-traumatized-during-the-great-march-of-return-are-still-struggling/" target="_blank">Great March of Return</a>'
(2018-2019) was possibly the most significant collective and
sustainable Palestinian action that attempted to reorient the new
generation around the starting date of the Palestinian tragedy.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_284703" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/6-4-2018.jpg?resize=933%2C579&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1" alt="Palestinians along the Gaza-Israel border reaffirm the 'Right of Return' and get shot by IOF - Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="392" height="243"></p><p class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Palestinians
along the Gaza-Israel border reaffirm the 'Right of Return' and get
shot by IOF – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]</p></div><p>Over 300 people, mostly from third or fourth post-Nakba generations, were <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/Whats-Next-for-Palestinian-Popular-Resistance-in-Gaza-Speaking-to-Journalist-Wafaa-Aludaini-20200607-0008.html" target="_blank">killed</a>
by Israeli snipers at the Gaza fence for demanding their Right to
Return. The bloody events of those years were enough to tell us that
Palestinians have not forgotten the roots of their struggle, as it also
illustrated Israel's fear of Palestinian memory.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/5685134/mod_resource/content/1/Sayigh%20On%20the%20exclusion.pdf" target="_blank">work</a>
of Rosemary Sayigh on the exclusion of the Nakba from the trauma genre,
and also that of Samah Sabawi, demonstrate not only the complexity of
the Nakba's impact on the Palestinian collective awareness, but also the
ongoing denial – if not erasure – of the Nakba from academic and
historical discourses.</p>
<p><strong>READ: <a title="Settlers get $8m boost to Judaise occupied Silwan" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221109-settlers-get-8m-boost-to-judaise-occupied-silwan/">Settlers get $8m boost to Judaise occupied Silwan</a></strong></p>
<p>"The most significant traumatic event in Palestinian history is absent from the 'trauma genre'," Sabawi <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Our-Vision-Liberation-Palestinian-Intellectuals/dp/1949762440" target="_blank">wrote</a> in the recently-published volume, <i>Our Vision for Liberation</i>.</p>
<p>Sayigh argued that "the loss of recognition of (the Palestinian
refugees') rights to people- and state- hood created by the Nakba has
led to an exceptional vulnerability to violence," with Syria being the
latest example.</p>
<p>Israel was always aware of this. When Israeli leaders agreed to the
Oslo political paradigm, they understood that removing the Nakba from
the political discourse of the Palestinian leadership constituted a
major victory for the Israeli narrative.</p>
<p>Thanks to ordinary Palestinians, those who have held on to the keys
and deeds to their original homes and land in historic Palestine,
history is finally being rewritten, back to its original and accurate
form.</p>
<p>By <a href="https://media.un.org/en/asset/k1c/k1cu3gr6g9" target="_blank">passing</a> Resolution A/77/L.24, which declared 15 May, 2023, as 'Nakba Day', the UNGA has corrected a historical wrong.</p>
<p>Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, rightly understood the
UN's decision as a major step towards the delegitimisation of Israel as a
military occupier of Palestine. "Try to imagine the international
community commemorating your country's Independence Day by calling it a
disaster. What a disgrace," he <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-general-assembly-votes-in-favor-of-commemorating-palestinian-nakba/" target="_blank">said</a>.</p>
<p><strong>READ: <a title="Israel 'afraid' to reveal looted Palestinian documents fearing debunked Zionist myths" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221205-israel-afraid-to-reveal-looted-palestinian-documents-fearing-debunked-zionist-myths/">Israel 'afraid' to reveal looted Palestinian documents fearing debunked Zionist myths</a></strong></p>
<p>Absent from Erdan's remarks and other responses by the Israeli
officials is the mere hint of political or even moral accountability for
the ethnic cleansing of over 530 Palestinian towns and villages, and
the expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians, whose descendants are now
numbered in millions of refugees.</p>
<p>Not only did Israel invest decades in cancelling and erasing the Nakba, but it also criminalised it by <a href="https://justvision.org/glossary/nakba-law" target="_blank">passing</a> what is now known as the Nakba Law of 2011.</p>
<p>But the more Israel engages in this form of historical negationism,
the harder Palestinians fight to reclaim their historical rights.</p>
<p>15 May, 2023, UN Nakba Day, represents the triumph of the Palestinian
narrative over that of Israeli negationists. This means that the blood
spilled during Gaza's March of Return was not in vain, as the Nakba and
the Right of Return are now back at the centre of the Palestinian story.</p>
<p>The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.</p>
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