Something’s happened in the last year: the debate over the 1967 borders is giving way to a debate over the ’48 borders. Ilan Pappe said this was happening in his book on ’48, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, now it’s all around us; Israel’s 60th birthday is causing even the New Yorker to print the word Nakba. If Israel actually wanted to preserve the two-state solution, it would issue a statement tomorrow acknowledging the great suffering in the Nakba, and the need to address the refugees’ rights.
Yesterday the softspoken Columbia U. anthropologist, Lila Agu-Lughod, co-author of the book Nakba (who met her co author, Ahmad Sa’di, at her father‘s funeral in Jaffa 7 years ago), posted these eloquent comments on the Columbia University Press blog to honor the 60th anniversary of the Nakba:
The Palestine/ Israel conflict has occupied center stage in
international affairs at least since the Balfour Declaration in 1917…
Its macabre manifestations confront us on TV screens and newspapers’
pages daily. The efforts invested to solve it peacefully have so far
failed. And despite apparently huge diplomatic efforts (genuine,
self-serving, or cynical) doomed approaches continue, paradoxically, to
prevail. These approaches most commonly—and with various degrees of
sophistication—construct a political landscape that is dominated by
elites who are described as either for or against peace. Leaders are
classified in loaded and dichotomous terms: as moderate or radical;
westernized or traditional; secular or fundamentalist. Very little, if
anything at all, is said about those who construct these categories and
their interests in doing so, let alone their role in perpetuating the
conflict. Nothing is said about the morality of those who categorize….[A] durable peace between Israelis and Palestinians must begin by
tackling the moral foundation of the conflict. In 1948 the vast
majority of the indigenous population, the more than 750,000 Arab
Palestinians who resided on 77.8% of the land of their country—which
later became Israel—were expelled. The will of the international
community to allow their return, expressed in the UN resolution 194, has been ignored.How can Palestinians challenge the current realities that are
constructed by powerful nations and the dominant narrative that denies
their existence, dreams, and aspirations? Why has the morality of their
claims to nationhood and to a return to their homes not been understood
or supported?
