Israel’s Celebration, Palestinians’ Catastrophe
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008Ahmad Samih Khalidi; 13/5/08
As Israel celebrates the 60th anniversary of its establishment, an inescapable counter-reality lingers over the occasion that is inextricably twinned with it. It is the Nakba or catastrophe, the 60th anniversary of the destruction of Arab Palestine in 1948. Despite a public discourse that often claimed the opposite, the Zionist movement set out to build a Jewish state in Palestine with a Jewish majority. This could only come about at the expense of the local inhabitants, the vast majority of whom were Palestinian Arabs — both Muslim and Christian. From this perspective, neither the Zionists’ intentions nor the reactions of the Palestinians are at issue: Israel could not have been built as a Jewish state except on the ruins of Arab Palestine.
