Catastrophe without end
From the 1948 Nakbah to events in the occupied territories today, Israel's aims and supporting myths have been remarkably similar, writes Salman Abu Sitta* -- to carry out the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by transferring the Arab populationWhat has made Sharon, a man with an unusually bloody record, pour out his wrath on the Palestinian refugee camps? After all, these camps in no way constitute a military challenge, and are, indeed, in many cases more like concentration camps, where tens of thousands huddle in tiny dwellings, their everyday lives depending on the jailers surrounding them in fortified positions.
Nevertheless, the Israeli attacks on the camps have been incessant, and the excuses for them variable. Palestinian refugee camps in Balata, Rafah, Khan Younis, Jabaliya, Kalandia and Dehaisha have been attacked repeatedly by Israeli tanks, armoured vehicles and bulldozers. Jenin has been attacked, earning the title of "fortress of resistance."
Why, then, this Israeli venom? The reason for it is simple: the murderer cannot rest until the body of his victim has been disposed of, that body testifying by its continuing existence to his crime. As long as the victim -- whether killed, wounded or in chains -- is still visible, the crime risks being found out, crying for justice such that the murderer cannot sleep.
Thus the story continues, with the Nakbah being not "an accident of the 1948 War," as Benny Morris, the Israeli "new historian," tells us, but a deliberate process that has left its mark on present developments and has continued in modified form until today. Today, however, it bears a different name, that of "ethnic cleansing." Morris, of all people, should recognise this, since he has himself provided irrefutable proof of it.
Zionist ideology in Palestine has always been consistent, based on one strategic goal and many myths. That goal has been to occupy as much as possible of Palestinian land and to expel all the Arabs from it, or as many as it is possible to expel. Certain myths were necessary in reaching this goal, since the Zionist enterprise had little physical presence in Palestine, and it has no legal justification to be there. Creating myths, therefore, has been indispensable for the cause.
One of these myths was to invent an imaginary place, where Palestine would be "a land without a people for a people without a land," as Zionist mythology has it. By force, conspiracy and political connivance, the land was taken by Jews in 1948, expelling the Arab population from it. However, the moment this foundational myth became reality, Palestine really becoming a land without a people thanks to Israeli violence, it was discarded in favour of a new one.
Now, it was said that the Palestinian refugees had left at their own accord, not as a result of expulsion, massacres and intimidation. The refugee problem, therefore, was not Israel's responsibility; rather, it was the Arabs'. The refugees should be resettled in the surrounding Arab countries, the logic being that when the members of the older generation who still remembered their homeland died, the younger generation would forget Palestine. Like gun cartridges, when each myth is spent, a new one is invented to replace it.
Israeli action was responsible for the first chapter of the Nakbah in 1948. Over 530 Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated by Israeli aggression, 89 per cent due to military operations and the rest due to various forms of psychological warfare. The expelled population comprised 85 per cent of the Palestinian population of the land that became the State of Israel after 1948, their land making up 92 per cent of Israel's total area. This was truly a catastrophe of mammoth proportions for the Palestinian people; it was a Palestinian holocaust.
MORE.......... http://web1.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/586/sc2.htm
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