Al-Naqba

[Al-khiyal]

Monday marks the 58th anniversary of the founding of Israel in 1948 - and the expulsion of Palestinians from their land. With millions still living under occupation or in exile, what Palestinians call their 'nakba' remains at the heart of their national identity:

In the last week of April 1948, combined Irgun-Haganah forces launched an offensive to drive the Palestinian people out of the beautiful port city of Jaffa, forcing the remaining inhabitants to flee by sea; many drowned in the process. My aunt Rose, a teenager at that time, survived the trip to begin her life in exile on the Lebanese coast. Each Palestinian refugee family grows up hearing again and again the stories of those final moments in Palestine, the decisions, the panic, as we live in the midst of their terrible consequences.

Throughout 1948, Jewish forces expelled many thousands of Palestinians from their villages, towns and cities into Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of others fled in fear. The purpose was to create a pure Jewish state, ethnically cleansed of the original inhabitants who had lived there for centuries. The creation of the state of Israel was the heart of this cataclysmic historical event for the Palestinians - the mass forced expulsion of a people; the more than 50 massacres carried out over the summer of 1948 by various armed Jewish forces; the demolition of villages to ensure the refugees could not return - all this is summed up in a single word for Palestinians: nakba, the catastophe.

"We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinians] never do return ... The old will die and the young will forget," said David Ben-Gurion, the founder of Israel, in 1949. But the young have not forgotten. The event is remembered every year on May 15, and the youth are at the heart of it.......

The great catastrophe

[Al-khiyal]

Julia Boutros - Wain al-malayeen

[Al-khiyal]

Israel is 58 years old today. Israelis have already celebrated with barbecues and parties. And so they should, for they've pulled off an amazing stunt: the creation of a state for one people on the land of another - and at their massive expense - without incurring effective sanction. Some of those not celebrating, the Arab citizens of Israel, were also there, demonstrating to remind the world that Israel displaced 250,000 to take their land without compensation. Millions more Palestinians will demonstrate today in the refugee camps of Gaza, the West Bank and neighbouring Arab states against their expulsion by Israel. The world, however, is not listening, any more than it did in 1948, when most of Palestine's inhabitants were expelled to make way for Jewish immigrants.......

Where is the global outcry at this continuing cruelty?

[Al-khiyal]

One of Israel's founding Ministers of Education and Culture, Professor Ben-Zion Dinur (1954), said it most sharply. "In our country there is room only for the Jews. We shall say to the Arabs: Get out! If they don't agree, if they resist, we shall drive them out by force." (History of the Haganah) With this theme as the explicit backdrop of a newly established state, it is no wonder that Israel, 58 years later, has had little chance of becoming a normal member of the state of nations.

Individual Israeli achievements in fields like science and technology are impressive. However, for all modern intent and purpose, the State of Israel, as a state building model, is a failing experience -- ideologically, religiously, politically, socially and, if U.S. favorite nation status were removed, possibly economically as well. Without immediate and decisive intervention from the world community to stop the ongoing Israeli aggression on Palestinians, Israel's intransigence and U.S.-equipped regional hegemony will not only fuel another generation of Palestinians willing to sacrifice their lives to achieve their freedom and independence, but will also further jeopardize Israel's basic premise that explicit religious discrimination, namely a Jewish-only state, is an accepted basis for statehood in modern times......

Israel at 58: A failing experiment - U.S. support is all that keeps State of Israel viable

[Al-khiyal]

The Palestinian refugee problem arose not from a conflict in which, as claimed, the Zionist forces overcame overwhelming odds against the Arab armies and the Palestinian population voluntarily left. But from a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing......

Palestinian refugees

[Al-khiyal]

Palestinians have been marking the worst day in their history - the day of Israel's creation - determined to lift damaging economic sanctions and warning that Israeli unilateralism could kill a two-state solution.....

Palestine marks 'day of catastrophe'

[Al-khiyal]

DAMASCUS, May 14, 2007 -- Palestinian refugees in Syria Monday marked the 59th anniversary of the "catastrophe" of Israel's creation with a call for resistance until the birth of a Palestinian state and the return of refugees.

"Fifty-nine years have passed since the Palestinian and Arab Naqba [Catastrophe] in 1948," the Damascus-based Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine said in a statement.

Israel declared independence May 14, 1948, triggering a regional war that saw more than 700,000 Palestinians being driven out or fleeing their homes.

Israel has never accepted UN General Assembly Resolution 194, passed in 1949, under which refugees have the right to return to their homes or be compensated for their losses.

Palestinian refugees' rights have also been mentioned as a stumbling block to a recently reinvigorated Arab peace plan that would see Arab recognition of Israel in return for lands seized in 1967 and the return of refugees.

"No one has the right to sell off the refugees' right of return. Abandoning this right amounts to high treason," said a statement from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The hard-line PFLP founder George Habash said in a statement that the Palestinian resistance "will only stop with the emergence of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital."

Palestinians mark 'catastrophe' of Israel creation