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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/28/erasure-vs-sumud-how-the-nakba-came-to-define-the-collective-palestinian-identity/">counterpunch.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Erasure vs. Sumud: How the Nakba Came to Define the Collective Palestinian Identity</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Ramzy Baroud</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">April 28, 2023<br></div>
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<p>On May 15, 2023, the Palestinian Nakba will be 75 years old.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1650102">cleansed</a> of their inhabitants in historic Palestine between late 1947 and mid-1948.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees">suffering</a>
the consequences of Israel’s quest for demographic supremacy. And, of
course, millions of refugees remain stateless, denied basic political
and human rights.</p>
<p>In a speech before the ‘UN World Conference against Racism’ in 2001, Palestinian intellectual, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi aptly <a href="https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/459247?ln=en">described</a>
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.</p>
<p>Though the massive influx of refugees in 1947-48 was a direct outcome of the Zionist ethnic cleansing campaign as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2537591">devised</a>
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.</p>
<p>In fact, the current Israeli occupation and entrenched racial <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/">apartheid regime</a>
in Palestine are not simply the intended or unintended outcomes of the
Nakba, but direct manifestations of a Nakba that never truly concluded.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="https://www.refworld.org/docid/4fe2e5672.html">UNGA Res. 194 (III)</a>
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.”</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/2013-05-16/ty-article/.premium/ben-gurion-grasped-the-nakbas-importance/0000017f-e12d-d38f-a57f-e77fcfdd0000">reported</a>
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.</p>
<p>But why would the victorious Zionists concern themselves with seemingly trivial issues as narratives?</p>
<p>“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 <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/2013-05-16/ty-article/.premium/ben-gurion-grasped-the-nakbas-importance/0000017f-e12d-d38f-a57f-e77fcfdd0000">wrote</a>. This ‘other nation’ is, of course, the Palestinian people.</p>
<p>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 <em>mukhtars</em>.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.alhaq.org/publications/19542.html">erasure</a>:
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”.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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,” <a href="https://www.plands.org/en/articles-speeches/articles/1997/the-feasibility-of-the-right-of-return">wrote</a> famed Palestinian historian, Salman Abu Sitta in reference to the Nakba and the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees.</p>
<p>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 <em>sumud</em> – steadfastness –
and resistance. It is the single most unifying platform that brings all
Palestinians together, beyond the restrictions of factions, politics or
geography.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<em>Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “</em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/These-Chains-Will-Broken-Palestinian/dp/1949762092"><em>These Chains Will Be Broken</em></a><em>:
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 </em><a href="http://www.ramzybaroud.net/"><em>www.ramzybaroud.net</em></a>
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