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52 YEARS AFTER THE CATASTROPHY PALESTINIANS ARE STILL ASSASSINATED ON THEIR OWN LAND
In Palestinian history and in the Palestinian collective memory, May 15th, 1948 is recorded as the Naqba, litterally, the Catastrophy. For the violent creation of the State of Israel, which was the culmination of decades of Zionist colonization under the protective wing of foreign occupation, did not only mark the political destruction of Palestine. It resulted from and in the physical loss of their motherland for all Palestinians. Three-quarters of a peaceful and mostly peasant people were transformed into homeless refugees scattered around their lost country, while the small number who succeeded in clinging to their land were stripped of their property and of their most elementary human, civic and political rights within the apartheid system of the newly erected settler-state. This took place amidst the sound and fury, the blood, fire and tears of a total war waged by the armed branches of the Zionist political parties and organizations, before and after they were integrated into the “official” army of the new state, against the Palestinian people as a whole, and as a people. A war of mass expulsion. That which today, after the bloody dismantlement of the former Yugoslav federation, the world has learnt to identify as ethnic cleansing. Not because they threatened anybody, but because they were there. Because they were the people of the very land the newcomers wanted to take by force for their exclusive use. So much so that they were not content to conquer Palestine, and expell the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants. In the 77% of the country they controlled on the morrow of the Naqba, they undertook to destroy the very signs of our roots in the land, and razed to the ground more than four hundred villages and towns. And we owe it to those who fell then, and later, and to those who mourn them and to all those whose individual lives were crashed in that tragedy - to all Palestinians - to remember those days, to understand their reality and their sense, and also to learn the harsh lessons of that dearly paid historical experience. Neither to indulge in self-pity, nor to nurture fantasies or delusions of vengeance. But to ground our unflinching thirst for peace on historical and human truth. On memory, and not on amnesia. On recognition of the fact that whatever other reasons may have motivated the invaders, the essence of their enterprise was the armed robbery of a country. And if peace cannot be built on absolute justice, as absolute justice, unfortunately, is not the rule in human history, let it at least rely on the solemn recognition of the injustice inflicted upon our people. This is the sense of the commemoration of the Catastrophy, and this is the message, which is really a message of peace, the Palestinian people is still struggling to convey to the world, after decades of struggle, from the launching of the 1965 upheaval of the camps in exile to the 1982 siege of Beirut, from the Intifada of the late eighties in the territories occupied in 1967 to the martyrs of the last days. But the commemoration of the Naqba this year will be remembered because 52 years after the great catastrophy, Palestinians who demand their rights are still assassinated by Israeli soldiers. For the demonstrators shot at by occupation forces were only asking for the implementation of the agreements signed within the framework of the Peace process: release of prisoners, freeze of settlements, in and outside occupied Jerusalem, return of the displaced, and withdrawal from the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967. And the Palestinian members of the security forces killed and wounded were only trying to protect and defend those demonstrators. And what the Palestinian people as a whole demand as a basis for peace is no more than the very minimum guaranteed by international Law, and deemed indispensable by the universal consensus of which Israel excludes itself: an independent, sovereign, peaceful and democratic state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (23% of Mandatory Palestine), with East-Jerusalem as its capital, the return of the Exiles to their motherland, and compensation for lost property. It is the double Israeli refusal to implement the interim agreements and to look for mutually acceptable negotiated solutions to the core-issues of the conflict which has brought us to this most dangerous crossroads, and the Israeli government bears responsibility for every drop of Palestinian and Israeli blood shed on the miserable altar of its colonial ambitions, and in the name of its “security doctrine”, which is the name it gives to military arrogance and the philosophy of force. Let no one be deluded by the fact that the Israeli government, on the very same day, took the brave decision to hand over three Palestinian villages neighbouring on the Jerusalem area to full Palestinian control. This, if effectively enacted, would merely be a very limited and partial implementation of an agreement signed nearly five years ago, and periodically reaffirmed since. But this is merely announced, and we shall wait to see it implemented on the ground. A few hours after the announcement, the Israeli government indeed hurried to announce that he would freeze its implementation because of the violent incidents of this bloody anniversary. But beyond this, we cannot ignore that this decision is also meant to delineate a definitive border between Palestine and its capital, and that the transfer of Abu Dis and Azariyye to the PNA is presented to Israeli public opinion and body politic as a means to strengthen and barricade the Israeli occupation and illegal annexation of East Jerusalem and other parts of the Palestinian territory, as well as a step towards “separation”, which is the litteral meaning of apartheid. How far we are from the language of peace ! How far from the minimum level of recognition that Palestinians, as individual human beings and as a national collective, have rights, and that these rights must be respected, not because it is or it is not the interest of the Israelis, but because respect of the principles of international law alone can found a stable and credible world order, in this region as anywhere else ! Indeed, negotiations will continue. Or will resume. We repeat it once again: what we want is peace. But we know it will not happen unless something fundamental in the Israeli approach changes, and unless Israeli leaders start demilitarizing and decolonizing their discourse, not only in international fora, but also when talking to their own public opinion. Our determination to achieve a just, and therefore durable peace, knows no limit. But the patience of our people, of any people, does. And the whole world should know: if we don’t reach an agreement with the Israeli government this fall, seven years after the famous “Oslo Accords”, we will proclaim statehood on our occupied country, and will call upon the world to stand by us in order to exercise our inalienable right to self-determination and materialize our sovereignty on our land. 52 years ago, the international community, emergeing at the time from a world conflict which had witnessed the greatest massacres of human history, and still conditioned by its own colonial tradition, passively watched the Naqba occur. Will it stand idle this time again, and drive our people to despair ?
15 May 2000
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The Editor |
