Don't Be Fooled: Israeli Independence = Palestinian Displacement.
Graffiti Walls, Main Campus, University of the Witwatersrand
Monday, 21st April 2008


“With each year that Israel prevents Palestinian refugees from returning home, a part of each of us remains homeless, in exile.” Green Party (2006)

While Israel celebrates its 60 years of ‘independence’, Palestinians and supporters of justice mark the event as Al-Nakba (meaning the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm”).

Throughout the world, the term Al-Nakba is used to refer to the devastation of Palestinian society and the dispossession of the Palestinian people resulting from the ethnic cleansing conducted by Zionist forces in its colonization and illegitimate occupation of 1947-49 and the subsequent establishment of the ‘independent’ State of Israel.

During that period, an exodus of more than 711 000 Palestinians occurred (The United Nations final estimate of the number of Palestinian refugees outside Israel after the 1948 War), with men, women and children being forced out of their homes and having to flee from bloody massacres. The table below records the depopulation of Palestinian towns and villages under Zionist forces (Abu Sitta, Salman [2001]: From Refugees to Citizens at Home. London: Palestine Land Society and Palestinian Return Centre):


Today, Palestinian refugees and their descendants are estimated to number over five million. Many of them live in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip in poverty-stricken refugee camps. Israel has since refused to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and has refused to pay them compensation, as required by UN Resolution 194 of 1948. Israel does allow, however, any Jewish person from any country automatic citizenship to the former homes of these homeless Palestinians.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Catastrophe of Israeli Independence. Whilst Zionists, may celebrate the massacres and forced occupation that accompanied the Catastrophe, supporters of justice recognize the event as one of mourning and a reminder of the importance of struggling for the Palestinian cause.


As we remember this 60th anniversary of the Nakba and the ongoing suffering of Palestinians, we take comfort from the contribution of the international community's resolve in ending South African apartheid. We also remember that the Palestine for which we struggle is not only a cherished piece of land and home to Palestinians. Nor is it just an anti-colonial liberation struggle with which formerly colonized peoples identify. But, as Edward Said frequently reminded us, Palestine is also an "idea"--the idea of freedom and diversity: free in that it transcends the confinement of ethnic, religious or nationalistic boundaries; and diverse in both its history of multiculturalism and ethos that different people can live together without living in ghettos. May that idea sustain us.

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