BADIL

Around 100 participants marched through the streets of Tel Aviv-Jaffa covering a route that formerly connected two Palestinian villages that existed within the city boundaries until 1948. This was the second year the Israeli organization Zochrot organized a right of return march on the anniversary of the Nakba.

The political and social nature of Zionism embraces a particular vision towards the Arab person in general, and the Palestinian person in particular, concerning his/her nature, culture and the existing relationship between this person and his/her homeland. This vision, however, contradicts the entire facts regarding the Arab person’s existence; in fact, Zionism and Arab existence stand in total contradiction to each other. This vision provides the fundamental basis for Zionist policy including land expropriation and displacement of people by brutal means, and is derived from mythology and past historical events.

The fundamental nature of Zionist ideology and culture manifests itself in three main ways: racism, aggression and expansionism. By this I mean, racism that considers the other as the enemy, and aggression as a natural consequence of racism which manifests itself through Israel’s continuous aggression against the Palestinian people. Finally, by expansionism I mean occupation, displacement and expatriation of the Palestinian people, destruction of villages, new plans for collective displacement (i.e., transfer pol icies), in addition to Israel’s aspirations for additional territory, and the creation of other new tragic realities on ground.

Many have written about the Palestinian Nakba as a concept and as a major historical event with severe negative impacts on the economic, social and demographic aspects of the Palestinian situation. The Nakba is not necessarily linked to a specific date, even though is normally associated with 1948. In fact, the Nakba is a complicated historical process: it required prior planning and, at the same time, its consequences remain to this day.

The elements of the Palestinian Nakba first came to light during the late nineteenth century, i.e., since the First Zionist Congress, the Balfour Declaration and subsequent Jewish immigration to Palestine. This was accompanied by Jewish propaganda, including the slogan of Palestine as a land without people. The British Mandate facilitated the creation of a Jewish state and the transfer of Palestinian land through new laws that transformed the landholding system from collective to individual ownership.

The last few years witnessed enormous popular efforts to defend the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. These efforts included raising awareness about the refugee problem and its importance as a basis for solving the Palestinian problem. These efforts took root in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and inside the ‘Green Line’; among Palestinians in exile whether it be in Arab countries or the US and in European countries, in addition to various international fora.

There is a natural inclination among political scientists, as well as politicians, involved in peacemaking, to look at the past and memory as an obstacle for peace. Liberating oneself from the past is recommended by such people as prerequisite for peace. This view is entrenched in a wider context of reconciliation and mediation policies that emerged in the United States after WWII. This school of thought was based on a business like approach that treats the past as an irrelevant feature in the making of peace.

This means the peace makers consider only a contemporary situation – with its balance of power and realities on the ground – as a starting point for a reconciliation process. It also means that even when a blatant failure is registered in such a peace effort, the renewed effort restarts from a similar point of view; namely, one that neglects to take into account the lessons of previous failures. Noam Chomsky who noticed such a tendency in the Middle East peace process concluded that the result was a never-ending ‘peace process’ which was not meant to bring peace, but rather provided jobs and preoccupations for a large group of people belonging to the peace industry.