60 Years of Denial
by Ramzy Baroud
Don't ask for what you never had,' is the underlying message made by supporters of Israel when they claim Palestine was never a state to begin with.
The contention is, of course, easily refutable. Following the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th Century, colonial powers plotted to divide the spoils. When Britain and France signed the secretive Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916, which divided the spheres of influence in west Asia, there were hardly any 'nation-states' in the region which would fit contemporary definitions of the term.
All borders were colonial concoctions that served the interests
of the powerful countries seeking strategic control, political
influence and raw material. Most of Africa and much of Asia were
victims of the colonial scrambles, which disfigured their geo-political
and subsequently socio-economic compositions.
But Palestinians,
like many other people, did see themselves as a unique group linked
historically to a specific geographic entity. All That Remains by
Professor Walid Khalidi is one leading volume which documents a
thriving pre-Israel history of Palestine and the Palestinian people.
Such history is often overlooked, if not entirely dismissed. Some
choose to believe that no other civilization ever existed in Palestine,
neither prior to nor between the assumed destruction of the Second
Temple by the Romans in 70 CE until the founding of Israel in 1948. But
what about irrefutable facts? For example, the Israeli Jerusalem Post
was called the Palestine Post when it was founded in 1932. Why
Palestine and not Israel? Whose existence, as a definable political
entity, preceded the other? The answer is obvious.
It isn't
the denial or acceptance of Israel's existence that concerns me. Israel
does exist, even if it refuses to define its borders, or acknowledge
the historic injustices committed against the Palestinian people. The
systematic and brutal ethnic cleaning of the majority of Palestinian
Christians and Muslims from 1947 to 1948 is what produced a Jewish
majority in Palestine and subsequently the 'Jewish state' of Israel.
Also
worth remembering are the equally systematic attempts at dehumanising
Palestinians and denying them any rights. When Ehud Barak, Prime
Minister of Israel at the time, compared Palestinians in a Jerusalem
Post interview (August 2000) to “crocodiles, the more you give them
meat, they want more,” he was hardly diverting from a consistent
Zionist tradition that equated Palestinians with animals and vermin.
Another Prime Minister, Menahim Begin referred to Palestinians in a
Knesset speech as “beasts walking on two legs.” They have also been
described as “grasshoppers”, “cockroaches” and more by famed Israeli
statesmen.
Disturbingly, such references might be seen as an
improvement from former Prime Minister Golda Meir's claim that “there
were no such thing as Palestinians...they did not exist." (June 15,
1969)
To justify its own existence, Israel has long subjugated
its citizens to a kind of collective amnesia. Do Israelis realise they
live on the rubble of hundreds of Palestinian villages and towns, each
destroyed during a most tragic history of blood, pain and tears,
resulting in an ethnic cleansing of nearly 800,000 Palestinians?
As
Israel celebrates its 60th birthday, nothing is allowed to blemish the
supposed heroism of its founding fathers or those who fought in its
name. Palestine, the Palestinians, and an immeasurably long
relationship between a people and their land hardly merit a pause as
Israeli officials and their Western counterparts carry on with their
festivities.
While some conveniently forgot many historic
chapters pertinent to the suffering of Palestinians, Israeli leaders —
especially those who took part in the colonization of Palestine — were
fully aware of what they did. David Ben Gurion, the first Prime
Minister of Israel, warned in 1948, “We must do everything to insure
they (the Palestinians) never do return.” By ensuring that Palestinians
were cut off from their land, Ben Gurion has hoped that time will take
care of the rest. “The old will die and the young will forget,” he
said.
Moshe Dayan, a former Israeli Defence Minister also had
no illusions regarding the real history beneath Israel's momentous
achievements. His speech at the Technion in Haifa (April 4, 1969) was
quoted in the Israeli daily Haaretz thus: “We came here to a country
that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish
state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established.
You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame
you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single
Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former
Arab village.”
Israel has, since its foundation, laboured to
undermine any sense of Palestinian identity. Without most of their
historic land, the relationship between Palestinians and Palestine
could only exist in memory. Eventually though, memory managed to morph
into a collective identity that has proved more durable than the
physical existence on the land. “It is a testimony to the tenacity of
Palestinians that they have kept alive a sense of nationhood in the
face of so much adversity. Yet the obstacles to sustaining their
cohesiveness as a people are today greater than ever,” reported the
Economist (May 8, 2008).
Living in so many disconnected areas,
removed from their land, detached from one another, fought with at
every corner, Palestinians have not just been oppressed physically by
Israel, but physiologically as well. There are attempts from all angles
to force them to simply concede, forget, and move on. It is the
Palestinian people's rejection of such notions that makes Israel's
victory and 'independence' superficial and unconvincing.
Sixty
years after their Catastrophe (Nakba), Palestinians still remember
their past and present injustices. Of course more than mere remembrance
is necessary; Palestinians need to find a common ground for unity —
Christians and Muslims, poor and rich, secularist and the religious —
in order to stop Israel from eagerly exploiting their own disunity,
factionalism and political tribalism.
But, despite Israel's
hopes and best efforts, Palestinians have not yet forgotten who they
are. And no amount of denial can change this.
Ramzy Baroud
(www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of
PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers
and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian
Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).
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