Overcoming the Nakba: In Israel as well as Palestine
For 64 years, Israeli society has tried to keep the Nakba at bay, hoping that denying, defending or ignoring it would somehow innoculate Israelis against the pernicious effects of the violence and ethnic cleansing that characterised the country's birth and drove much of its subsequent history. But as with individuals, nations cannot be involved in that level of violence and oppression and not pay a steep moral and emotional price. No matter how hard one tries to repress it, the violence ultimately corrodes your most basic values and identity.
And so, today, the Palestinian Nakba has become Israel's Nakba as well.
It's never been an even fight, the contest with Zionist Jews and Israelis on the one hand, and Palestinian Arabs on the other. But, then again, it's never been lopsided enough for one side to achieve a final victory over the other. Israel is not unique in this regard. All empires, great and small, pay a price for the violence they use to bring territories under their control and then subdue and manage the populations inhabiting them. The price is even higher when the violence is inflicted on the nearest "other", living on what’s claimed by the more powerful group as its own patrimony.
It's worth noting in this regard, for anyone who remains astonished at the unwillingness of most Israeli politicians to own up to Israel's role in the Nakba, that when the United Nations recently investigated the ongoing discrimination and oppression of Native American communities in the US, not a single member of the US Congress would agree to meet with them. The problem is that however damaging is the plague of gun violence or the continued oppression of Native American in the United States, it does not threaten the country's existence as a political entity. Tragically, the genocide of native peoples here was successful enough so that most in the US, whether fourth generation citizens or recent arrivals, can largely avoid thinking about it, and even continue to have sports teams featuring blatantly racist logos.
Israelis don't have that luxury. People can sit in a cafe in Tel Aviv or Haifa blissfully unaware of what's going on across the Green Line. But to the extent this is true, the ignorance is wilful, and comes with a steep price. In fact, for most Israelis, the occupation is front and centre every day - no matter how much they try to wish it away. And let's face it, as more Israelis have moved to the right politically, they are no longer bothering to wish it away. Wilful or wishful, its impact on the country's politics, economy and social life are profound. Just look at the headlines from Haaretz in the past week: "Israel police must stop the brutality and permit protests" - the "brutality" in question is being directed against Israeli Jews, not Palestinians; "While the education corps aspires to pluralism, the military rabbinate has a different agenda" - dealing with the increasingly rabid xenophobia in the IDF; "Israel transformed from democracy to an oligarchy" - with regard to the rise of a small and permanent political class that "shares the spoil of rule" between themselves and those whose actions are outside the reach of democratic accountability...
Zionism as an ideology combined three of the most powerful exclusivist and hierarchical discourses known to humanity: religion, ethno-nationalism, and modernity. All three discourses depend first and foremost on separating one's group from surrounding groups and then claiming various forms of superiority to these "others", based on one's identity. In this case, these involve belonging to "the true religion", being the land's "true inhabitants", and being culturally, economically and politically more advanced than the indigenous population - and thus able to "legitimately" claim sovereignty over the territory. Such an exclusivist and inherently militant identity has succeeded, in the Zionist case, in achieving most of its goals. In the Palestinian case, its main success has been in preserving a Palestinian identity rooted in the soil of the country, despite the majority of Palestinians living in exile for several generations...
But neither identity has proven successful at providing either comprehensive security or an environment in which the two communities could interact outside of a zero-sum contest with the other. And so, for example, Zionist exclusivism was turned on Jewish immigrants from Muslim countries not long after the creation of the Israeli state. Palestinian society has remained mired in class, clan and other factional conflicts that have significantly hampered the ability of the community as a whole to mount a successful resistance against Zionism, which has long exploited the factional structure of Palestinian society to keep Palestinians weak and divided.
For a century, Palestinians have been forced to push for the creation of a political model - a territorially independent state - that, given the balance of power between them and Israel, as well as the larger political economy of the Middle East, would leave them with little chance of creating a democratic polity even if they achieved de jure independence. The difficulties of the region’s countries that have achieved independence in creating stable democracies highlight the difficulties an independent Palestine would have faced. Even Hamas, which prides itself on being the only "true" resistance force left in Palestine, can do little more than Israel's bidding - when push comes to shove. And so, within a day of the above quoted headlines, the Israeli media was reporting that Hamas was collaborating with the PA to ensure that Nakba Day protests stayed clear of Israeli controlled areas and didn't involve violence. Do anything else, and Israel would have no problem unleashing hell on earth in Gaza once again, which Hamas would be powerless to stop, and which would turn whatever remains of its support base against it.
Unable to defeat the occupation, Palestinians have the even more difficult burden of not merely resisting the occupation but also of literally transcending it, in order to rise above it, and imagine a new set of political and economic relations that could bring them the freedom, justice, dignity and development they deserve... Ultimately, it seems clear that if there is to be a breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it will have to come from artists, activists and other cultural creatives who have the skills and imagination to build futures that most of the rest of us can't yet see. It's not always a pleasant experience, forcing people to ask new questions and consider new answers. But it's necessary, and ultimately probably the only chance either Israelis or Palestinians have to come out of this conflict with their dignity and highest ideals still intact. Artists are likely to be the only force that can turn the catastrophes of the past century into the promise of a better day.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/201251511524127163.html
See: 64 years later, peaceful resistance triumphs from the heart of Israeli jails
On the 64th anniversary of Al Nakba, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) hails the courage and resilience of thousands of Palestinian prisoners as they continue to peacefully struggle for their basic rights and freedoms. We positively note that an agreement was reached between representatives of around 2,000 Palestinian hunger strikers inside Israeli prisons, and officials from the Israel Prison Services, whereby the prisoners will end the hunger strike in exchange for a relative improvement to the inhumane conditions of over 4,600 Palestinian prisoners... We hope that the agreement will serve to actually improve the deteriorating human rights condition of Palestinians inside Israeli detention facilities. We remain deeply concerned about the severely deteriorating health conditions of a number of the Palestinian prisoners who were on hunger strike and call on the Israeli authorities to grant them access to immediate and proper medical attention.
Also: The Agony of Palestine
And : 1948 no catastrophe says Israel, as term nakba banned from Arab children's textbooks
Israel's education ministry has ordered the removal of the word nakba – Arabic for the "catastrophe" of the 1948 war – from a school textbook for young Arab children, it has been announced. The decision – which will alter books aimed at eight- and nine-year-old Arab pupils – will be seen as a blunt assertion by Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud-led government of Israel's historical narrative over the Palestinian one. The term nakba has a similar resonance for Palestinians as the Hebrew word shoah – normally used to describe the Nazi Holocaust – does for Israelis and Jews. Its inclusion in a book for the children of Arabs, who make up about a fifth of the Israeli population, drives at the heart of a polarised debate over what Israelis call their "war of independence": the 1948 conflict which secured the Jewish state after the British left Palestine, and led to the flight of 700,000 Palestinians, most of whom became refugees.
