16 - 22 May 2002
Issue No.586
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 16 - 22 May 2002 Issue No.586 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
1948-2002 -- THE NAKBAH CONTINUES:
Soon after taking office with a pledge to crush the Palestinian Intifada within 100 days Ariel Sharon gave an interview to the Israeli daily Haaretz in which he expressed his belief that Israel's "War of Independence" was far from being over. Thus did the newly elected premier, with an easy shrug of the shoulders, explode one of Israel's founding myths: the creation of the Jewish state, rather than being the product of an anti-colonial struggle against the British mandate, as Israel had claimed for decades, was a colonial enterprise aimed at "freeing" the new Jewish homeland of its indigenous population.
illustration: Gamil Shafik
Israel's War of Independence was, and continues to be, the Palestinians' Nakbah (catastrophe). Remembering the 1948 Nakbah is not a futile academic exercise, nor is it an attempt to rub salt into old wounds best left to heal. The declaration of Israel's "independence" on 15 May 1948 was also an announcement of Palestinian dispossession from much of their homeland. Sharon's continuing "War of Independence" is designed to complete that dispossession.
In the article below, celebrated Israeli social scientist and New Historian Ilan Pappe writes: "A circle has thus been closed. When Israel took over almost 80 per cent of Palestine in 1948, it did so through settlement and ethnic cleansing of the original Palestinian population. The country now has a prime minister who enjoys wide public support, and who wants to determine by force the future of the remaining 20 per cent."
The Nakbah continues, but so does Palestinian resistance.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page