December 3, 2003
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Origins of the Middle East Crisis
By GEORGE BISHARAT
In early October, I meandered the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland with
easy-laughing Mahmoud. We were bleary-eyed from international travel,
and from many hours of animated discussions at our conference.
Scholars, lawyers and activists had converged to explore ways to
implement the rights of Palestinians to return to and regain their homes,
seized by Israel in 1948. This fate had befallen Villa Harun ar-Rashid, the
Jerusalem home of my late grandfather, Hanna Ibrahim Bisharat. We had
been inspired by accounts of successful campaigns for housing restitution
for refugees and other dispossessed peoples in Bosnia, South Africa and
Rwanda.
The sky was leaden, the wind off the slate lake bracing. But the fountain
at the end of the lake lofted exuberant white plumes of water toward the
heavens, and seemed to elevate with them our hopes and dreams for a
more just and peaceful future.
Little did we suspect that in other conference rooms across the same
city, Israelis and Palestinians had been conducting covert, informal
negotiations for two years toward what are now touted as the "Geneva
Accord." The agreement, while envisioning a Palestinian state in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, studiously avoids mention of the very rights Mahmoud
and I, and many others, are fighting to protect. The negotiators,
prominent private citizens, include former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi
Beilin and former Palestinian Information and Culture Minister Yasser Abed
Rabbo.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has vehemently attacked the unofficial
pact, and the negotiators have been condemned as irresponsible
meddlers. The accord has no chance of adoption in the immediate future.
Its principal objective may have only been didactic: to teach Israelis there
is an alternative to the militaristic policies of Sharon.
The pointed silence regarding the Palestinian right of return, however,
means that an important opportunity has been missed to apprise Israelis,
and the world, of a critical reality. No real or lasting peace will be
achieved in the area until Israel finally admits the long-denied truth,
accepts moral responsibility and apologizes for its forcible exile of
Palestinian refugees 55 years ago.
In 1948, three quarters of a million Palestinians were driven from what
became Israel, their homes, land and possessions taken over by the new
Jewish state. Most were victims of direct military attacks, forcible
expulsion orders or a deliberate campaign of terror and intimidation,
fueled by actual massacres. A post-war internal report from the Haganah (a
quasi-official Jewish militia) stated that of 391,000 Palestinians who had fled
by June, 1948, some 73 percent had done so in response to Jewish military
operations.
Palestinian villagers were often attacked at night, from two or three sides,
while a road to the closest Arab country was left open. Their flight was
hastened by news of massacres committed by Zionist forces, the most
infamous of which occurred on April 9, 1948 in Deir Yassin. Up to 254
mostly unarmed Palestinians were slaughtered. Some were paraded in
Jerusalem on trucks before being executed.
Describing the July 10, 1948 attack on Kweikat, near Haifa, a villager
attested: "We were awakened by the loudest noise we had ever heard,
shells exploding and artillery fire ... the whole village was in panic ... Most
of the villagers began to flee with their pajamas on. The wife of Qasim
Ahmad Said fled [mistakenly] carrying a pillow in her arms instead of her
child."
Exile involved more than material deprivation. Palestinians lost their homes,
belongings, fields, orchards, workshops, possessions, professions -- but
more than that they lost their human dignity. Any people that has suffered
massive wrongs -- African- Americans, Japanese-Americans, Jews --
understand the special wound of victimization for who you are, not what
you have done.
Like slavery for African-Americans, internment for Japanese-Americans and
the Nazi holocaust for Jews, the "Nakba" ("Catastrophe") was a seminal
event in the consciousness of the Palestinian people. No act of the
Palestinians justified their expulsion. Their only "crime" was that they were
born Christians and Muslims in a place coveted by the Zionist movement
for an exclusive Jewish state, and refused to slink off into history as a
vanquished people.
As Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, once candidly admitted to
a colleague: "If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel.
That is natural: We have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us,
but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from
Israel, it's true, but 2,000 years ago, and what is that to them? There has
been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault?
They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country."
(The comment was made to Nahum Goldmann, as reported in the latter's
book, "The Jewish Paradox.")
The U.N. quickly affirmed the right of the Palestinians to choose to return
to their homes, or to receive compensation and support for resettlement.
Israel stone-walled the entire international community, rejecting virtually
any return by the refugees of 1948, a position the U.S. delegate to the
U.N. Conciliation Committee on Palestine denounced as "morally
reprehensible."
An official Israeli Transfer Committee under Yosef Weitz mobilized to block
the return of Palestinian refugees, orchestrating the obliteration of entire
Palestinian villages, or their resettlement with Jewish immigrants.
The Transfer Committee also devised a propaganda plan to justify Israel's
rejection of the right of return. Israel soon claimed that Palestinians left
their homes after radio broadcasts by Arab leaders bidding them to
evacuate. Later review of broadcast transcripts proved this claim to be a
fabrication. Israel argued that Jewish emigration from Arab countries, some
of which flowed to Israel, constituted a "population exchange" that
compensated for its expulsion of the Palestinians -- as if two wrongs made
a right.
Israel also blamed Arab states for "failing to resettle Palestinian refugees" --
something the Palestinians themselves actively resisted. Five and a half
decades later, Palestinian refugees and their offspring number 5.5 million
people.
Israel's denial of responsibility for the refugees, and rejection of their
repatriation -- unchallenged by the new "Geneva Accord" -- is, at this
stage, as galling and hurtful as the original expulsion itself. The pain of
denial should be intuitively understood by victims of the Nazi holocaust --
indeed, by all of us who are repelled by denial of that terrible episode in
history.
Thus the chances for long-term peace and reconciliation would be greatly
advanced if the Israeli government were to stop hiding the truth. As
remote as peace seems today, halting the 55-year cover-up and apologizing
would place peace negotiations between the two peoples on an entirely
different ground. At this stage, the dream of return to Palestine is for
many Palestinians a shield against despair, and recognition of the right to
return a matter of great principle. A sincere Israeli apology would be a
milestone toward reconciliation that no Palestinian could ignore.
Formidable obstacles lie in the path to apology. Many Israelis doubt that
Israel deliberately expelled the Palestinians. But many others -- elders who
remember the events of 1948, or others who have read histories of the
period based on recently declassified documents -- know the truth.
More difficult are Israeli fears about the consequences of such an
admission, especially the possible return of large numbers of Palestinians
to Israel, and the attendant threat to the Jewish character of their state.
Yet establishing an ethnically exclusive state in someone else's country
may not be a "right" that merits protection. Accepting back refugees, who
would form a larger Palestinian minority in Israel than has been deemed
ideal for Jews, may be the price Israel must pay for establishing a Jewish
state in Arab Palestine.
Nor would an apology inevitably cause the return of millions of Palestinian
refugees. It is entirely possible that, with the dignity of Palestinian
refugees ameliorated by an apology, Palestinians' decisions regarding actual
return would be based on more purely pragmatic grounds.
Of course, part of Israel's political elite may still seek exclusive Jewish
control over all of former Palestine, including the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. If so -- and there is much in current Israeli policy that supports such
an inference -- apology is the furthest thing from their minds, and the
regional forecast is for blood. One must place hope in the small but
growing number of Israelis who see through the curtain of fear behind
which their leaders hide their expansionist policies, and in the desires of
manyother Israelis to live a simple life of peace.
I can add personal testimony to the power of apology. Last May, I wrote
about going to visit my grandparents' home in Jerusalem, and my exchanges
with its Jewish residents, and their attempts to deny my family's
connection to our home. After my story was published, I heard from three
other Israelis who had lived there after its expropriation in 1948. Two of
the three discussed the home only casually, without acknowledging my
family's dispossession.
But the third person was different. His message to me began: "I read your
article with special interest, and with an odd, but distorted sense of
connection to you." He explained that he was a native-born Israeli, and
while a member of the Haganah during the 1948 war, was stationed in Villa
Harun ar-Rashid for a period of three months. He ended by saying that he
would like to meet me, and apologize for the taking of my family's home.
Fortunately, the gentleman lived nearby and, indeed, we met. After an
hour of friendly conversation, this dear man reached across the table,
extending his hand, and said: "I am sorry. I was blind. What we did was
wrong, but I participated in it and I cannot deny it." He added: " I owe
your family three months rent," and we both broke into laughter.
It is hard to fully describe what I experienced. But vindication was
secondary to the tremendous surge of admiration I felt for this man's moral
courage. I was inspired, truly, to match his humanity. Just that response,
writ large, is what awaits Israel if it could bring itself to apologize to the
Palestinians. There is an untapped reservoir of Palestinian magnanimity and
good will that could transform the relations between the two peoples, and
make things possible that are not possible today.
George Bisharat is a law professor at the University of California's Hastings
College of Law in San Francisco.
Forwarded for your information. The text and intent of the article
have to stand on their own merits.
www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
