Every 15 May since 1948, Palestinians, wherever they are gathered in the homeland or the diaspora, commemorate the anniversary of the disaster that befell them as a people. The
The Palestinian Nakba had repercussions for all of the Arab countries and peoples. It not only meant the loss of Palestine as part of the Arab homeland, but it also constituted the first of broader Arab defeats – as the establishment of a foreign destabilizing entity, the state of Israel led to the squandering of Arab energies and resources, the obstruction of Arab development projects, and the hindrance of Arab unity.
The Palestinian Nakba gave birth to an Arab political literature that explored from a variety of intellectual perspectives, the meaning, causes and implications of the Nakba as well as ways to resist it. Some analysts, adopting a critical approach, viewed the Nakba as a logical and expected outcome of Arab underdevelopment and the rational result of a long confrontation between traditional or outdated Arab societies and a modern Jewish society supported by European colonialism.
In his book The Meaning of the Nakba (Ma‘na al-Nakba), published in August 1948,
The Nakba of 1948 may have been the foundational historical traumatic event of the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian people, as individuals, families, and society. But it is more than a single event––it is a series of tragedies leading to the dispossession of the Palestinians and their seeking refuge from one country to the next and one region to another: from the
Wherever there are large communities of Palestinians,
Such observances, needless to say, are anathema to Israel. The Zionist Movement has denied the Nakba since its occurrence in 1948 and has forbidden commemorations or discussions about it. Each year, on the 5th of Iyar according to the Hebrew calendar (which corresponded to 15 May 1948), it celebrates instead what it considers to be a day of “independence.” In 2011, the Israeli Knesset passed a law that prohibits public organizations funded by the state from commemorating the Nakba, and imposes economic penalties on local authorities and educational, cultural, and social institutions that organize or participate in commemorations of the Nakba.
This law (merely one in a series of discriminatory laws that violate the rights of Palestinian Arabs in Israel) is aimed at controlling the historical narrative. In banning teaching of a history of Palestine that would depart from the official Zionist narrative, it aims to erase the memory of the Nakba from the consciousness of generations of Palestinian youth.
In recent years, Israeli authorities have insisted with increasing stridency that the Palestinian people and their national leaders acknowledge Israel as “the state of the Jewish people.” This not only denies the historical roots of the Palestinian people in their own homeland and renders forgotten the tragedies they have suffered since 1948, but it also eliminates significant dimensions of their legitimate national rights––especially the right of return to the homeland. Meanwhile, Israeli authorities continue to seize the property of Palestinians in Israel, whether their owners are citizens in the state or living as refugees in the diaspora. This process—a continuation of the Nakba of 1948––is underway in the
However, there are some Jewish forces standing in opposition to these official Zionist policies. Among the most notable is Zochrot (memories in Hebrew), an Israeli organization, founded in 2002, that participates in Nakba commemorations and focuses its activities in particular on commemorating destroyed Palestinian villages by organizing marches of return to them and holding conferences and photographic exhibitions about them. Its goal is to increase awareness among Jewish citizens about the ongoing injustices of the Nakba; it advocates for the right of return and the decolonization of the state, the key to peace and reconciliation between the Israeli Jewish and Palestinian peoples.
Palestinian culture, as custodian of national identity, reflects the evolution of the meaning of Nakba within the Palestinian consciousness. Literature provides an example of the effect of the Nakba on Palestinian consciousness. Literature after the Nakba is different from that before 1948; and literature from within the homeland is distinct from that of exile. The literature produced within Palestine is dominated by the theme of resistance. The poetry of
Palestinian writers and artists in the diaspora dealt with themes of exile, the reality of the pressures and hardships of homelessness, nostalgia, and anticipation: longing for the lost homeland and anticipation of return to it. Palestinian authors portrayed the tragedy that befell their people, reflecting in their poetry, stories, and novels the pains of the Nakba: homelessness and loss, psychological torture, feelings of exile and alienation. Among its most sincere expressions are the stories of
In the early 1960s, with the publishing of
In recent years, Palestinian culture has moved toward independence from these historical conditions. Its ambitions have moved towards deepening its universal, humane, and open nature. This was what Mahmoud Darwish, for example, was expressing, when in the last years of his life he began aspiring to write “pure poetry.” It can also be seen in what filmmaker
Darwish, Mahmoud. Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems. Translated and edited by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forche; with Sinan Antoon and Amira El-Zein. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003.
Kanafani, Ghassan. Men in the Sun, and Other Palestinian Stories. Translated by Hilary Kilpatrick. London: Heinemann, 1978.
Khalidi, Walid, ed. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. 2d ed. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2006.
Nofal, Mamdouh, Fawaz Turki, Haidar Abdel Shafi, Inea Bushnaq, Yezid Sayigh, Shafiq al-Hout, Salma Khadra Jayyusi, and Musa Budeiri. “Reflections on al-Nakba.” Journal of Palestine Studies 28, no.1 (Autumn 1998): 5–35.
Zurayk, Constantine. The Meaning of the Disaster. Translated by R. Bayly Winder. Beirut: Khayat's, 1956.
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