Israel's celebration remains a Palestinian catastrophe

Neither side will ever agree on the narrative of the conflict, and the prospects for peace in the Middle East are slim

Ahmad Samih Khalidi
The Guardian, Monday May 12 2008

As Israel celebrates the 60th anniversary of its establishment, an inescapable counter-reality lingers over the occasion that is inextricably twinned with it. It is the nakba or catastrophe, the 60th anniversary of the destruction of Arab Palestine in 1948.

Despite a public discourse that often claimed the opposite, the Zionist movement set out to build a Jewish state in Palestine with a Jewish majority. This could only come about at the expense of the local inhabitants, the vast majority of whom were Palestinian Arabs - both Muslim and Christian. From this perspective, neither the Zionists' intentions nor the reactions of the Palestinians are at issue: Israel could not have been built as a Jewish state except on the ruins of Arab Palestine.

In 1948, about 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forcibly driven out of their homeland, creating what still stands today as the world's largest and most longstanding refugee problem. The nakba created an entirely new politico-demographic reality. From a longstanding majority on their own soil, the Palestinians became a small, vulnerable minority and a tattered, broken nation living in exile or under foreign rule.

Continued . . .