The catastrophe of 1948 was, is and will continue to be the sine qua non of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It represents the historic injustice visited upon the Palestinian people to which everything else – the 1967 occupation, the 1973 war, the 1987 intifada, the 1993 Oslo Accords and the 2000 intifada – is a footnote. Without addressing and resolving that injustice, the conflict will carry on.
I still remember the flood of refugees coming in to Ramallah-al-Bireh in 1948. I remember how we tried to organize to feed and clothe all those people, displaced and homeless that they were. I remember how, for my friends and I, this represented a political awakening to a world we did not quite understand and we hadn t been that interested in before. It took me some time to understand the dimension of the tragedy that befell us then.
More than half of all Palestinians were displaced in 1948. Some 800,000 people were forced from their lands and homes to make way for a state created by and for another people, a people that had come from elsewhere.
It was a crime against all Palestinians, against humanity. Those who lost their homes in this way were not then and are still not allowed to reclaim what rightfully belongs to them. We know of the persecution of Jews in Europe. We know of the Holocaust. But one crime does not justify another.
As a 17-year-old in 1948 I knew nothing about the Zionists. I remember how people before1948 rented their homes to blond, blue-eyed people from Europe. Soon these people started fighting us. We had no idea who they were and why they were fighting. When the Jordanians then took over, it was something that just happened. I didn t understand this was a new administration; that a new order had taken over our destinies.
The various Palestinian leaderships, from Haj Amin al-Husseini in 1948 through to former PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, have been criticized over and over again for never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity . Never has a historical criticism been so pervasive and so wrong.
The rejection of the 1947 partition plan by Haj Amin Al-Husseini in particular has been singled out for criticism. Look, say historians, Palestinians were offered almost 50 percent of historic Palestine. Now, Palestinians are offered less than 22 percent. How different things could have been.
But how could it have been so? Forget for a moment that Palestinians constituted at least three-quarters of the population of historic Palestine in 1948 and to accept less than 50 percent of the land simply made no sense: the partition plan reminds me of a story from the Old Testament. Two women bring their claims to a child before King Solomon. Unable to decide which of the women is the real mother, Solomon declares that he will cut the baby in half to give to each woman. Rightly he understood that the real mother would not allow any harm to come to her baby and would reject the proposal.
Sadly, the UN was no Solomon.
Nor indeed was Washington so many years later. By the time Arafat went to Camp David it was as clear to him as it was to all Palestinians that the historic opportunity for peace that the Oslo accords were meant to clear the way for had passed in a concrete whirl of colony-building. The so-called Camp David proposal reflected only the colonial Israeli project and neglected the fundamental Palestinian right of return. The opportunity was missed all right, but Israel missed it.
Now, 60 years on, a two-state solution is looking as distant as ever. Israel continues its colony-building, laying by-pass roads and building walls deep in occupied territory. This can never lead to a viable and contiguous state for Palestinians. Israeli greed dictates that no such solution is forthcoming.
Israeli greed is also thinning out the moderates among us; those who believe that a peaceful, negotiated and just solution can still be obtained.
If this continues, there will no two-state solution. Instead there can only be either a one-state solution (which Israel will do everything to avoid) or a complete expulsion of all Palestinians from Palestine. In order to counter this, Palestinians need to reform their political system to secure political unity and change their governance to a parliamentary system. Palestinian society needs to strengthen to cohesively face the threat of Israeli expansion.
By finding that war is easier to wage than peace, Israel will reap what it sows and the future will belong to radicals, Islamists and others. For now, only conflict looms.
Abdel Jawad Salehis a former mayor of Al-Bireh, a former member of the PLO s Executive Council and a former PA minister of agriculture. This article is published by Daily News Egypt in collaboration with BitterLemons.org.
