BADIL

On the morning of the 21^st March 1960, thousands of black South African demonstrators converged on the police station in the township of Sharpeville as part of the anti-pass campaigns organized by the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC). As the demonstrations ended, SA police opened fire on the gathering,  killing sixty-nine demonstrators and injuring several dozen others. The incident marked what would later be considered a turning point in the anti-Apartheid struggle marked by demonstrations globally, and the adoption, for the first time by the Security Council, of a resolution condemning the apartheid system and its attendant violence.[1]

Following the Soweto massacre in 1976, the United Nations departed from its practice, and by then growing legacy, of resolutions condemning Apartheid and brought into force the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.

The sea change disrupting the repressive status quo of authoritarian regimes throughout the Arab world seemingly slows into a calm wave on the shores of Palestine. While significant events, including the intersubjective acceptance of the peace process’s failure, and the unprecedented popular marches onto Israel proper’s borders, have marked development, these events have done little to halt the ongoing displacement and dispossession experienced by the Palestinian people. Nevertheless, mounting victories in the name of self-determination, democracy, freedom, and dignity throughout the Arab world provide hope to Palestinians and their allies as they enter a new phase after two decades of a failed peace process.

Despite 20 years of peace diplomacy, the majority of the Palestinian people remain in forced exile, mainly as refugees and/or stateless persons vulnerable to persecution and renewed displacement in their host countries. The root causes of Palestinian displacement and dispossession remain unaddressed and there is no respect of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, national independence, sovereignty and return to the homes and properties from which they have been forcibly displaced, despite the United Nations's assertion that “full respect and the realization of these inalienable rights of the Palestinian people are indispensable for the solution of the question of Palestine.[1] Instead, 20 years of peace diplomacy have resulted in a truncated Palestinian people, more than half of whom continue to be afforded the treatment of an “indistinct mass of refugees”[2] or a “surplus population” expected to find individual solutions and to disappear from the political agenda of the peace makers.[3]

The central aspect of Palestine’s Ongoing Nakba since 1948 is the forcible displacement of the indigenous Palestinian people from their homeland and the denial of their return by Israel.

According to Badil’s 2008 Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, only one third of the Palestinian people are persons who have never been forced to leave their homes, while almost seventy percent are refugees or internally displaced persons, victims of the forced displacement induced by Israel's ongoing policy of population transfer (ethnic cleansing). Approximately two thirds of these displaced Palestinians continue to live as refugees in forced exile outside the borders of their homeland, the British Mandate territory of Palestine – the state of Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip of today. This issue of al-Majdal, and the one that will follow, are dedicated to these Palestinian refugees whose stories are as diverse as their experiences of dispersal and loss as they have struggled to return.

 For anyone taking a road trip along the highways of the part of Palestine that became Israel in 1948, one is bound to spot a blue and green structure in the shape of a bird marked with the Hebrew letters KKL, which stands for Keren Kayemeth L’Yisrael, the Hebrew name of the Israeli branch of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). All around the bird one will see expanses of forests planted sometime in the past few decades. A walk through one of these forests will take the visitor past fruit trees, cactus plants, terraced hillsides, and the ruins of buildings. In some cases, these ruins are explained in a JNF brochure pointing to their ancient history, in other cases, one is left to the devices of one's imagination. In all cases, these sites are what remains of some of the more than five hundred villages depopulated and destroyed through the course of Israel’s establishment, the homes of millions of Palestinian refugees struggling to return to them for over sixty years. By walking through a JNF park or forest, one inhales the fresh smell of the green-washing of Palestine’s Nakba. 

In the last issue of al-Majdal, we explored legal avenues for holding accountable Israeli perpetrators and those complicit in violations of international law. All the pending cases discussed in that issue have since been dismissed, whether through legislative intervention (as with the Daraj case in Spain), or findings that the cases were not justiciable or the plaintiff did not have standing (as with the al-Haq case in the U.K. and the Bil'in case in Canada). Once again, Palestinian victims were denied effective remedies because challenging Israeli impunity was judged to be too politically sensitive for the courtrooms of the richest and most powerful countries in the world.

One of the enduring questions that has confronted politicians and strategists of the Oslo process is how to resolve the Palestinian refugee issue within the confines of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What happens to the more than 5 million Palestinian refugees whose homes of origin are located inside Israel?

For most refugee experts and practitioners crafting durable solutions for Palestinian refugees within the context of two states the answer is quite simple. Individual Palestinian refugees should be permitted to exercise their basic rights to return to their homes and repossess their properties. Resettlement assistance should be provided to those refugees who choose not to return.

Encompassing the Voices: Building Palestinian History

 The Nakba and other subsequent displacement have resulted in the loss of numerous written documents and have dramatically shaped Palestinian identity. With the contribution of oral history, Palestinians are enriching their history to encompass all segments of society; giving a voice to the poor, peasants, women, those marginalized by the official ideological or national narrative - most importantly - those who have lived the Nakba of 1948. Including these diverse and multiple experiences and voices within national Palestinian history crucially seeks to uncover and deepen understanding of events that have shaped this people’s dispossession, colonization and occupation. It also permits to discover the richness of Palestinian culture and traditions, its diversity and complexity.

 It nuances the official Palestinian narrative too often based on political personages and ideological dogma. Oral history also permits to challenge the written and dominant discourse surrounding the Nakba, a discourse dominated by proponents of the Zionist-Israeli narrative.   The upcoming commemorations - 40 years of Israeli occupation (2007) and 60 years of the Nakba (2008) - provide opportunities for furthering the place of oral history in Palestinian history. To this aim, many activities are planned (see the Call to Action on the back cover of this issue), such as the creation of a truth commission based on the South African model whereby witnesses and victims of the Nakba can tell their stories to parliamentarians, academics and international figures.

The Ongoing Nakba; International Complicity

The Nakba (catastrophe) stands for the destruction of the economic, social, political and cultural fabric of Palestinian society in 1948, when the western powers of the time permitted and encouraged, in violation of international law, the replacement of Palestine by a colonial settler state, i.e. the state of Israel. 58 years later, in May 2006, while Israel and the international community are again set to destroy Palestinian society, Palestinians commemorate the Nakba of the past and the Nakba of the present.  The international community created the Palestinian Authority as a step towards the self-determination of the Palestinian people. Today, however, it is on the verge of causing a humanitarian crisis and destroying the embryonic state institutions it created in order to impose a vision of Palestine that disregards international law and the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people. Canada, the United States, the European Union, the Quartet and Norway decided to sanction the democratically elected Palestinian government in order to induce Hamas' acceptance of the principle of nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Road Map, i.e. conditions that most Israeli political parties have failed to meet. (See article by Nabih Bashir, Israeli political parties' ideological projects and inclinations towards the conflict).