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The Israeli twins — Independence and Nakba

Independence Day is also the Day of the Nakba (in Arabic, the Day of the Catastrophe).
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May 11, 2016

Independence Day is also the Day of the Nakba (in Arabic, the Day of the Catastrophe). There is no escaping it. Whether we like it or not, Israel’s story includes the Jewish story as well as the Palestinian one. Hence, the question that faces Israel today is a simple one: Can Nakba and Independence live together under the same roof? If the answer is no, there is an automatic result: We have to cancel the words and spirit of our Declaration of Independence (“ … Israel … for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace. … it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or gender,” and so on), to significantly re-legislate our constitutional, basic laws and then walk sadly into the sunset. Because an Israel for Jews only is automatically less democratic, more race-based and discriminatory.

But if there is a feasible positive answer, it is one of coexistence that entails respect and appreciation and acknowledgement of our happy and our sad stories together. For this acknowledgement to occur, Israel and the Israelis must develop a completely different way of thinking than what has been indoctrinated into us for almost seven decades. The Nakba must become a part of the Israeli daily actuality.

For a very long time, I think, the main problem between the Israelis and the Palestinians has not been a matter of politics, but rather psycho-politics. Each side tries to beat the other in the regional “Traumas Competition.” They cite the Nakba, and we answer with the Holocaust. And each side struggles to prove “mine is worse.” Neither side really listens to the pain, or witnesses the wounds, fears and tears of the other. We live in a binary reality — my trauma or nothing. And the result is — nothing. No peace will ever occur until we can undertake a real, sensitive and inclusive dialogue that includes both histories.

There are many ways to acknowledge history within contemporary life. Take, for example, the brass “stumbling blocks” that are memorials to victims of the Holocaust (stolpersteines) set into the stone sidewalks in German cities, a quiet and poignant, non-provocative reminder of the losses of a painful past. A commemoration to those who lived there and are gone forever. In Warsaw, small, multilingual signs cue us to specific histories from the Holocaust. No large, alienating monuments, just a silent presence that becomes part of the daily life of all pedestrians and bystanders

In Israel, such gestures can be done quite simply. Our own history will not be harmed by the acknowledgement of the reality of a time before 1948, as well. We need to recognize a shared history that incorporates Jews and Palestinians together.

It may be impossible to roll back history, to correct yesterday’s wrongdoings. But wherever possible, why not try? The situation of Palestinian refugees has been one of the most powerful propaganda arguments for Israel, almost from its first day of existence. “See the difference?” Israeli propagandists have claimed. “While we have absorbed millions of our refugees from the Arab countries, they never lifted a finger to help their own refugees.” To date “they” (the Palestinians) still live in wretched camps, eternal clients of the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA). And while this sounds like a knockout argument, in actuality, it is a hollow one because Jewish Israel did nothing to help its own Palestinian refugees, its own non-Jewish citizens. We must remember: According to the Zionist dogma, Olim (Jewish immigrants) are, by their very definition, not refugees. To make aliyah is a positive ideological decision, while the status of refugees and fugitives is the negative result of expulsion, escape and defeat. Consequently, the Israeli Palestinians are our refugees, in every respect.

More than 250,000 formal Israeli citizens are 1948 refugees and their descendants. They live among us, not in a remote camp on the outskirts of Beirut, Jordan, West Bank or Gaza. At the end of the War of Independence, about 160,000 Palestinians survived the cleansing policies of the time. Of them, about 40,000 were displaced people deported from their local communities and forced to move into temporary living conditions in neighboring villages and communities within the borders of the newly born Israel. For these people, Israel did nothing, or less than nothing. Despite endless court judgments and oversight by public and governmental committees, our leaders did their utmost to breach state promises repeatedly given to the poor residents on the deportation day.

Promises assuring them that they would be able to return to their land when the fighting ended were never fulfilled. Desecrated cemeteries and holy places became warehouses and livestock sheds; entire villages were wiped off the face of the land. The mourning places of one became the recreational parks for the others, and it is not over yet. This is how “the only democracy in the Middle East” denies the history of some of its citizens, and thereby, its own history, as well.

It could have been different. And it still can be. 

Israel can still make a huge contribution to itself, its citizens and to the entire region by making the rights of its Palestinian refugees living inside Israel its highest priority. This would be a worthy and true realization of the right of return — wherever it is possible and practical. This would not alter the demographic balance so sanctified by the establishment because it is an internal Israeli matter. After we have made a place for all of Israel’s other ethnic groups and colors, it’s time to make room for the remaining one-fifth of the country’s citizens — the Palestinians.

In my view, wherever possible, people should be allowed to return to the homes they lost decades ago — or be compensated accordingly. After all, not only were there ancient synagogues and classical mosaics in all of these places — but people, churches and mosques, as well. All backed up by explicit Supreme Court decisions. Israel for all Israelis and all their histories combined — even when it hurts, maybe especially when it hurts. 

Because without this, Israel will never experience a true independence. It will continue to exist in ongoing servitude to fears, delays, hostility and a perpetual thirst for war. There is no independence without reconciliation, just as there is no Nakba healing without forgiveness. 

So why are we so surprised on this Independence Day of 2016 that we have still more Nakba and much less independence?


Avraham “Avrum” Burg is an Israeli author and social activist, a former speaker of the Knesset and former chairman of The Jewish Agency.

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