The problem with Nakba Day | Opinion
On May 15, Jews celebrated the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the modern state of Israel, an event considered a miracle by a people who had never given up on the dream of restoring their homeland from which they had been dispossessed more than 18 centuries ago. That same day, Palestinian Arabs commemorated what they term the Nakba (catastrophe) during which up to 539,000 Palestinians left their homes during the events that accompanied Israel’s birth. Rarely noted in the coverage of the Nakba is that it was the Arabs who initiated the violence in 1947-1948 because they refused to accept the United Nations vote to create two separate states, one for Jews and one for Arabs, in the British-ruled Palestine Mandate.
Contrary to the claims today that the Arabs were driven from lands allotted to the Jews, most Arabs who left did so out of fears stoked by their own leadership or were urged to leave their homes to make way for invading Arab armies with the assurance that they could return once the Jews had been routed. The rout did not happen. Instead, against overwhelming odds, the 650,000 Jews of the newly declared state defeated the professional armies of the surrounding Arab states. In the wake of Israel’s victory, angry mobs, often with official sanction, compelled 900,000 Jews living in Arab-ruled lands to flee their homes. Most had no place to go but Israel.
In effect, a population exchange took place. Occurring so soon after the post-World War II population exchanges in Europe, a similar solution seemed within reach. But the Arabs rejected such an arrangement. So, while the newly-established Israel absorbed a population larger than its own, the surrounding Arab states refused to absorb their Arab brethren, instead forcing them to languish in refugee camps. The burgeoning and embittered Palestinian population adopted a nationalism bent on reversing the events of 1948.
And so plans to work toward Palestinian self-rule, including American-backed Israeli plans offering to turn over nearly the entire West Bank and Gaza in 1947, 1967, 1993, 2000 and 2008, have foundered on Palestinian refusal to countenance a Jewish state or acknowledge the historic Jewish presence on the land. Rather than work toward building a viable future with Israel, the Palestinians and their supporters extoll what they call “resistance” to Israeli occupation, by which they mean violence and terrorism.
Elisabeth Schwartz lives in Englewood.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: The problem with Nakba Day
