COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW
VOL. 124 MAY 2024 NO. 4

887
ARTICLES

TOWARD NAKBA AS A LEGAL CONCEPT

Rabea Eghbariah*

The law does not possess the language that we desperately need to
accurately capture the totality of the Palestinian condition. From
occupation to apartheid and genocide, the most commonly applied legal
concepts rely on abstraction and analogy to reveal particular facets of
subordination. This Article introduces Nakba as a legal concept to resolve
this tension. Meaning “Catastrophe” in Arabic, the term “al-Nakba”
ᚁالنك (is often used to refer to the ruinous process of establishing the State
of Israel in Palestine. But the Nakba has undergone a metamorphosis; it
has evolved from a historical calamity into a brutally sophisticated
structure of oppression. This ongoing Nakba includes episodes of
genocide and variants of apartheid but remains rooted in a historically
and analytically distinct foundation, structure, and purpose.
This Article therefore proposes to distinguish apartheid, genocide,
and Nakba as different, yet overlapping, modalities of crimes against
humanity. It first identifies Zionism as Nakba’s ideological counterpart
and insists on understanding these concepts as mutually constitutive.
Considering the limits of existing legal frameworks, this Article goes on
to analyze the legal anatomy of the ongoing Nakba. It positions
displacement as the Nakba’s foundational violence, fragmentation as its
structure, and the denial of self-determination as its purpose. Taken
together, these elements give substance to a concept in the making that
may prove useful in other contexts as well.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vC1-5qn6T9un_B5Lqn5iB-HJpyJ0t1Hw/view



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