All posts tagged nakba day

After Golan clashes, is Israel rethinking the Assad (or Palestine) file?

by Daniel Levy on June 8, 2011 in Israel, The Territories with Comments Off

To most observers witnessing events in Syria, the goal is clear-cut: end the killing, support democracy, and change the Assad regime — hoping it will be removed or reformed to an unrecognizable degree. State actors looking at the same reality will often bring a different set of considerations into play, especially if they happen to be neighboring Syria. Israel has had a complicated relationship with the popular upheaval in its northern neighbor — and, indeed, with the Baathist Damascus regime in general over the years.

As of Sunday, that complexity entered a new dimension. Of course the popular uprising in Syria is not about Israel, nor will it be particularly determined by Israel’s response. Nevertheless, Israel’s leaders, like those elsewhere in the region, will have to position themselves in relation to this changing environment, and this will, in part, impact Syria’s options.

On Sunday, June 5, marking Naksa Day (the Arab “setback” in the 1967 war), protesters — mostly Palestinian refugees and their descendents — marched to the Israel/Syria disengagement line representing the border between Syria and the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. According to reports up to 22 unarmed Syrian-Palestinian protesters were killed when Israeli forces apparently resorted to live fire (Israeli laid mines may also have been detonated and may have caused causalities, the exact unraveling of events remainssketchy). In most respects, this Sunday’s events were a repeat performance of the outcome of May 15′s Nakba Day commemorations (which Palestinians mark as the anniversary of their catastrophe in 1948).

Israel’s initial response to the wave of regional anti-regime protests reaching Syria was, according to reliable reports, to privately root for the “devil we know” approach — encouraging allies, including the U.S., to go easy on the Assad regime. That may sound counterintuitive — Israel is not at peace with Syria, the Assad regime is close to Iran, hosts the Hamas leadership, and is considered to actively assist in the arming of Hezbollah. Yet an explanation for this Israeli disposition is also not too hard to fathom.

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Why June 5th Matters

by Joe Catron on May 31, 2011 in The Territories with Comments Off

I gasped as the first bullet struck a young man standing a few paces ahead of me. Watching him crumple to the ground, I struggled for breath and fought my natural urge to run. “Allahu Akbar!”, the crowd roared around me. “Yalla, Shebab!” A half-dozen other men – none of whom could have been older than twenty, and most of whom looked much younger – rushed forward, retrieving their fallen compatriot and carrying him quickly to a waiting ambulance. A thin trail of blood marked their path, ending in a small, dark puddle where the first of the day’s many gunshot victims had fallen.


 

Thousands of refugees and other Palestinians had gathered at the Erez Crossing in the northern Gaza Strip. An imposing military structure of massive concrete barriers and machine gunners’ towers, the border wall separates Gaza Strip residents from the 78% of Palestine seized by the State of Israel in 1948. For the two-thirds of residents who are refugees, it also prevents their return to the homes from which they and their families were forcibly expelled that year. Palestinians throughout the world remember this Nakba, or catastrophe, every May 15 with gatherings, demonstrations, and resolutions to someday return.

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Lessons From Nakba Day Disturbances Go Unlearned

by Mitchell Plitnick on May 17, 2011 in The Territories with Comments Off

 

Wise leaders in Jerusalem and Washington were given a great
deal of very useful information yesterday in Israel when a popular action led
to hundreds of Palestinian refugees crossing the border into Israel, leading to
the deaths of ten of them.

Unfortunately, wisdom in those two cities is in short supply
and what’s there is largely drowned out by political self-interest in the
decision-making rooms.

But it’s worthwhile for us to learn those lessons, and maybe
with enough effort, we can get a message through.

1.  This was a
popular action

The Israeli government was quick to try to score
political points from the Nakba Day tragedies by concocting a conspiracy
theory involving Iran and Syria. Sadly, Barack Obama’s administration followed
its recent trend of ceding all leadership to the Netanyahu government and almost
immediately followed the Israeli lead.

The problem is this, more than most conspiracy theories, is
demonstrably wrong.

Organizing for this action began months ago. I was seeing
calls about it on Facebook and on e-mail lists well before the Arab Spring
began. Syria, much less Iran, had nothing to do with it, nor was their
involvement in any way needed.

On the contrary, while Syrian President Bashar Assad might
have welcomed a chance for the world to put Israel once again in the position
of being the one killing civilians, he is not anxious to see more popular
organizing, least of all among the Palestinian refugees in Syria.

As Oklahoma University professor and Syria expert Joshua
Landis told my colleague Ali
Gharib at ThinkProgress. “They’ve all had the same response to people who
have protested to demand justice and human dignity: They’re blaming it on
foreign governments and infiltrators.”

2. Peace pays dividends for Israel

Both Jordan
and Egypt
went to great lengths (some would say too far) to protect Israel’s border and
embassy, respectively. The same was true for Palestinian
security on the West Bank. The Syrians looked the other way as refugees ran
into the Golan Heights, Hamas had no interest in stopping them and the
inability for Israel and Lebanon to communicate led
to the killings along that border, whoever is to blame. Each of those
governments have different relationships with Israel and have different issues
to contend with regarding refugees. Understanding those diversities is key to
dealing with the larger conflict. But the greater the relationship, the greater
the potential for cooperation; that should be obvious. Israel cannot continue
to count on Egypt especially but Jordan as well to anger their own people in
its defense.

3. We all have to stop kidding ourselves about the
refugee issue

The entire Oslo process was based on dealing with the
fallout of the war of 1967. For the Palestinian masses, the conflict is based
on the results of 1948.

I see no reason to think there will ever be a significant
return of refugees to Israel proper. And I have also said that I
disagree with the popular Palestinian interpretation of international law
on this matter. I do not support the political movement based on the “right of
return.”

But it is not only foolish but reckless to ignore the fact
that the refugee issue is at the very heart of Palestinian nationalism.

Israel doesn’t want to deal with reality on this issue. That
reality is that, whatever arguments people want to make about whether
the Palestinians were driven out (a great many were) or simply fled (a
great many did that too), they unquestionably left as a result of the war that
started in 1947 and Israel completely barred their return thereafter.

Israel therefore bears an enormous moral burden here, and it
needs to deal with that. It’s refusal to do so is what yesterday’s actions were
about.

4. 1948 was not only the birth of Israel

“It is important to point out that these events are taking
place on a day which marks the establishment of the State of Israel,” said
Benjamin Netanyahu, making the case that these actions were all about
“destroying Israel.” In fact, they were about a 63-year old refugee crisis.

Netanyahu and his all too vast cadre of apologists will
point out that the refugees have been kept in camps, in part because they are
determined to return and in part because many of the countries they have lived
in for the past six decades do not want them to fully assimilate into their
societies for a variety of reasons.

And those things are true, but they don’t change the
essential reality of Palestinian dispossession, and they don’t relieve Israel
of its responsibility for that dispossession. It was the direct result of
Israel’s creation and Israel will never have a normal existence until it faces
that reality and deals with it honestly. The “we are about to be destroyed”
rhetoric that all Israeli political leaders since Ben-Gurion have fed on is
meant to avoid that reality.

Once again, this was about the Palestinians’ experience, not
about destroying Israel. It is in the minds of too many Israelis and their
lock-step supporters abroad but only a minority of Palestinian extremists that
those two have to be one and the same.

5. The Golan Heights is not recognized internationally as
Israel

The demonstrators who flooded the Golan Heights were not
threatening the “sovereignty” of Israel, as Netanyahu and others have droned
repeatedly. The Golan was annexed by Israel illegally thirty years ago and no
one, including the United States, recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the area.
That’s where the activists from Syria came running into and that was as far as
most of them went. That’s not Israel and if there ever is a comprehensive peace
deal, as unlikely a prospect as that seems to be right now, it will not be
Israel.

 

Ultimately, this entire, ugly episode for Israel could have
been an object lesson about the issues it is really confronting. Instead, the
Israeli and American governments continue to pander to extremists, peddle
nonsensical stories to explain their difficult circumstances and deny their own
roles in getting us to the sad state we are in today. Acknowledging those roles
does not mean they are the only ones at fault, but they seem to see it that
way.

Who needs Iran, Hamas, or those activists who believe that
only Israel’s ending can bring about peace? Leaders like Netanyahu and
“friends” like the US Congress are doing a far better job of cornering Israel,
cutting off its options and limiting its future than Iran ever could.