The Palestinians call their plight at the end of the 1948 war the Nakba, the 'Great Catastrophe.' Nakba is the loss of home, homeland, honor, everything, and being shattered and scattered. It is not an event that ended in 1948; it has been going on for 76 years

The author is a Middle East expert, writer and translator

ISTANBUL 

“Without the use of terror, it is unlikely that Jewish independence would have been achieved at that time.” (Mordechai Nisan of the Truman Research Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

On Oct. 7, in the aftermath of the Aqsa Flood, Israel embarked on the most intense and destructive bombardment of Gaza in the history of mankind in revenge and reoccupation. We will never know the number of Gazans martyred, nor the material and moral damage and cost of the genocide and destruction. But none of this is new. Perhaps the only novelty is that history is now repeating itself in front of cameras and with the use of much more lethal weapon systems. The process that started during the British mandate period, especially during the Great Arab Revolt of 1936-1939, continued with ethnic cleansing in 1948, and reached today under occupation, Palestinians were repeatedly subjected to armed violence, lost loved ones, displacement, dispossession, impoverishment, and were left to their own fate to suffer. In the last nine months, we have been watching an accelerated summary of the 76-year story.

How did the UN pave the way for Zionist diplomacy?

The Zionist leaders' goal of returning to Palestine after 1,900 years to establish a democratic Jewish state culminated in occupation and ethnic cleansing. Indeed, as a result of the migrations from Eastern Europe that began in the 1880s, and despite British support in the 1917 Balfour Declaration for the establishment of a “national home,” by 1947, the Jewish population in Palestine had grown from 8% to only 30%, and the land they were able to acquire was only 6% of Palestine.

During the British mandate period, the Zionists laid the institutional foundations of the future Jewish state while preparing plans for occupation and ethnic cleansing. In addition to the international political and diplomatic tools they used, armed Zionism was introduced in 1939. Zionist gangs (Hagana, Irgun, and Stern), which in today's terminology are typical terrorist organizations, used weapons in the 1940s not only against the Palestinians but also against the British, whom they began to see as the biggest obstacle to the future Jewish state. In the face of the armed revolt between 1944 and 1947, Britain referred the matter to the UN.

The UN Partition Plan, adopted on Nov. 29, 1947 under pressure from the US, envisaged a two-state solution and was a complete victory for Zionist diplomacy. For the Jews, who in 70 years owned a mere 6% of the land and represented 30% of the population, they were given 56% of Palestine for a future state. However, the presence of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living there was deemed an obstacle to the establishment of a democratic Jewish state. This is where the Zionist gangs embarked on a three-stage policy of ethnic cleansing.

3 stages of ethnic cleansing

First, the Zionist gangs put Plan C into action to occupy the Arab lands between the disconnected Jewish colonies. By March 1948, less than 5% of the Palestinian population had been expelled and 30 villages had been depopulated. But this was not enough for Zionist goals. They prepared a Plan D to go beyond the 56% allocated to them in the UN plan, to acquire as much land as possible, including Jerusalem, and to completely change the demography. This Plan D, which included economic destruction and psychological warfare accompanied by de facto aggression, triggered the mass exodus of Palestinians and the emergence of the issue of refugees. News of blood-curdling massacres, especially in villages such as Deir Yasin, Tantura, Duweimah, Abu Shusha, Safsaf and Beled al-Sheikh, served to terrorize the masses and caused them to flee in panic. Between April 1 and May 15 alone, 182 villages were evacuated and several Palestinian cities captured. The policy of ethnic cleansing continued during the first Arab-Israeli war that followed, as well as after the subsequent cease-fire. Thus, by the 1950s, the Zionists had completely destroyed half of the 1,300 Palestinian settlements, turning them either into forests, parks, gardens, or new Jewish settlements. From 1947 to 1949, through terror tactics and war, the Zionists expanded the portion of Palestinian territory under their control from 6% to 78%. Jordan and Egypt took over the rest.

So what do the gangs do in this process? They besiege villages, massacre women and children in resisting villages, execute as many young men as possible, bomb neighborhoods, blow dwellings up with their inhabitants, set fire to fields, steal valuables, plant landmines in the rubble to prevent the return of those who fled, drop barrel bombs filled with gasoline and dynamite on the narrow streets of densely populated cities like Haifa, and bombard them with mortars. Using loudspeakers, they broadcast the screams of Palestinian women recorded elsewhere, while announcing, "Run for your lives. Jews are using poison gas and nuclear weapons." News of the rape of women has also been instrumental in this mass flight. Even the inhabitants of villages that previously resisted every Zionist attack left in panic.

In the 1948 war, 15,000 Palestinians lost their lives, 800,000 out of 1.4 million Palestinians (60%) became refugees, and families were torn apart. However, the number of those who died on the migration routes and in the places where they took refuge — from thirst, disease, heat, drowning in the sea, or the bullets of Zionist gangs — is unknown.

Ethnic cleansing continued after Israel's establishment. Of the 156,000 Palestinians who remained in Israel, 30,000 (15%) were expelled by the mid-1950s. Jews from all over the world poured into the new state in 1948. Palestinians' farms, livestock, vineyards, factories, bank accounts, homes that had not been destroyed, furniture, artwork, clothes, heirlooms — everything that belonged to their ancestors — fell into the hands of the Jews like the spoils of war.

Refugees who tried to sneak across the border after the war to see their lost homes, retrieve valuables or livelihoods, or find lost family members and relatives were severely punished. So much so that infiltration points in the West Bank and Gaza were hit, Egyptian and Jordanian targets were bombed, and thousands of Palestinians, mostly unarmed, were killed or wounded while trying to cross the border between 1949 and 1956.

Meanwhile, a massacre of memory was added to the physical carnage. Already during the war, archeologists Hebraized the names of Palestinian settlements and geographical landforms according to the Torah and other religious-historical texts in an attempt to break the link with the 1,300-year Arab past.

While refugees struggled under miserable conditions in tents, Palestinians who never left their land acquired Israeli citizenship, but their lives were no better. They are the longest and first-hand witnesses of Zionism's colonialist-settler project. They are "unwanted guests" in their own land, considered a "strategic and demographic threat." They were kept under strict military rule until 1966 under state-of-emergency regulations. After 1967, Gaza and the West Bank were placed under similar military occupation. Military governors were given unlimited powers to control every aspect of Palestinian life, including expulsion of the population, arbitrary detention, administrative detention without trial, confiscation of land and property in the name of security or public interest, indefinite curfews, permanent control over entering and exiting villages, prevention of travel and confiscation of charitable foundations. Those who remained in the cities were either deported to nearby villages or sent to small ghettos in the poorest neighborhoods. For the first few years, they were forced to live in small areas surrounded by wire fences and other barriers. They were subject to permanent humiliation, dispossession and marginalization. Land ownership, access to water resources and the right to purchase land were taken away by law.

Ongoing Nakba

The Palestinians call their plight at the end of the 1948 war the Nakba, the "Great Catastrophe." Nakba is the loss of home, homeland, honor, everything, and being shattered and scattered. It is not an event that ended in 1948; it has been going on for 76 years. Palestinians and their descendants, who have been left without a homeland, struggle with all kinds of problems in the countries where they seek refuge. The fact that Israel gets away with every massacre it commits, that it is not prosecuted, that it is not touched, is the main factor that ensures the continuity of the Nakba. Israel's founding elites, regretting not having captured the entire territory in 1948, constantly look for opportunities to expand their borders. They even invaded Gaza and Sinai in 1956, but were forced to withdraw in the face of threats from the US and the Soviet Union. In just four months of Gaza's occupation, they killed 1,000 Palestinians.

In 1967, they more than achieved their dream by tripling their territory in six days. But now, they were worried about losing their status as a Jewish state in the face of the larger Arab population under their control. This is precisely why, after the 1967 war, some 300,000 Palestinians — 20% of the population in the West Bank and 10% in Gaza — fled to Jordan and became refugees for the second time due to the occupier's threats or tricks. In addition, no one who happened to be abroad during the occupation (as of June 7, 1967) was allowed to return, meaning that those who studied, worked or traveled abroad became stateless. Those who tried to return without authorization were shot upon capture. Those who never left their land, meanwhile, suffered all manner of calamity under the Israeli occupation and the arbitrary practices of the military rulers under the state of emergency, disguised as law, focused on gradual ethnic cleansing and dispossession. For the Zionists, the only way to build "Greater Israel" was through permanent institutionalized violence, which is why the slightest attempt of armed or peaceful resistance by Palestinians has been suppressed with tanks and heavy weapons.

Palestinians were not the only victims of Zionist policies for 76 years; millions of citizens of neighboring countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria — just like the Palestinian refugees living in camps in these countries — have been displaced either permanently or for a certain period of time due to Israeli attacks under the guise of "retaliation" and actual occupation, with many losing their lives.

Israel, which greatly values its image and bases its existence on "moral" grounds, uses the term "population transfer" to counter the argument of "ethnic cleansing." Just as they call the racist and discriminatory wall surrounding the West Bank, which is eight meters (about 26 feet) high and equipped with all kinds of state-of-the-art security devices, a "security fence," the official name of the army is the "Israel Defense Forces" and Israel boasts to have "the most moral army in the world." For years, Israel's political and religious leadership, as well as the occupying settlers, have increasingly been calling for a new "population transfer" so not a single Palestinian is left behind within its borders. Oct. 7, 2023 was an opportunity to realize this dream, not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

So what is at the root of the Zionists' brutal policies against the Palestinians? Human beings do not easily start massacres without dehumanizing or denouncing their opponents. After Oct. 7, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called the Palestinians "human animals." This view is not new. The Zionist leaders, whose main concern was to find a solution to the Jewish problem in Europe and to build their state, rejected the existence of the indigenous Arab population from the very first migrations, considering them either Bedouins or foreigners — even invaders — and therefore did not include them in their future plans. In his diaries, Theodor Herzl describes how the Palestinians had to be kidnapped using insidious methods. Through its historiography, Zionism has attempted to absolve itself of responsibility and ignore the issues of ethnic cleansing and refugees by proving that Palestinians never existed. Prime ministers like Golda Meir have argued that there are no such people as the Palestinians. They accept no responsibility for the emergence of the refugee issue, claiming that the Palestinians left the land on their own at the direction of the Arab states.

Israel was established by force of arms and terror tactics and survives by force of arms and state terror. This is because the leaders of the armed gangs and militias, the architects and implementers of ethnic cleansing, filled the most critical posts after independence, including the prime minister's office. David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, Izak Shamir, Ariel Sharon, Moshe Dayan and others "deserved" their seats because of their past massacres. According to the architect of the doctrine of retaliation, Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan, Israel must live forever with a weapon in its hand. "We are a generation of settlers; we could not plant a tree or build a house without a steel helmet and a gun barrel. This is the destiny of our generation and our way of life. Our only option is to be prepared, to arm ourselves, to stand strong and resolute." The ruling elite's expectation that military occupation will strengthen manpower, prosperity, prestige, self-confidence and the Zionist ideology is the main reason for the repetition of occupation and ethnic cleansing.

References:

I Saw the Catastrophe: Palestinians Tell What They Lived in 1948, (ed.) Ala Abu Dahîr, İz Publishing, 2011.

David Hirst, The gun and the olive branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East İyidüşün Publishing, 2015.

Ilan Pappe, The Biggest Prison on Earth: History of the Occupied Territories, Küre Publications, 2023.

Ilan Pappe, Forgotten Palestinians, Küre Publications, 2020.

Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, Küre Publications.

Radvâ Âşûr, Tantura Woman, Ketebe, 2019.

Jean-Pierre Filiu, History of Gaza, Bilge Kültür Sanat, 2016.

“The Nakba did not start or end in 1948”, el-Cezire, 23.5.2017, https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/5/23/the-nakba-did-not-start-or-end-in-1948

“Massacres and the Nakba”, Al-Majdal Magazine, Issue 7, Autumn 2000, https://www.badil.org/publications/al-majdal/issues/items/489.html.

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu