Rethinking epithets

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We call it the "catastrophe or nakba", sometimes the "memory of the theft of Palestine" but rarely "the occupation of Palestine". Words have an immense power to suggest and political terms often imply a preconception. So why do we refrain from using the word occupation to describe what happened in 1948? Is this a way of turning an ongoing trauma into a memory? Is it a way of forgetting what really happened?

What happened in 1948 was much more than a catastrophe or theft. It was ethnic cleansing, with all its attendant crimes against humanity. It was an act of occupation. So why do champions of the Palestinian issue, and most of the media, describe the occupation of Palestine in 1948 as anything but occupation?

Salman Abu Sitta, and before him Edward Said, have denounced what happened in 1948 in various terms but both stopped short of calling it an occupation. This is because occupation brings up the need for liberation, which necessarily involves military action, whereas today we are being expected to endorse "coexistence", renounce "violence", accept "the other" and mull over endless roadmaps.

Recently, recognition by the Israelis of their historical responsibility for what happened in 1948 was touted as a prelude to "coexistence" rather than to an end of occupation. Israel's "new historians" now take a philosophical position on the matter, writing volumes describing and documenting the crimes committed by Jews in Palestine in 1948 (in all 104 documented massacres and dozens of systematic incidents of rape of which little is known). The aim of such atrocities was to force the Arab Palestinian inhabitants to leave their land. The new historians see their work as a prelude to coexistence and the acceptance of "the other". In other words, their admission of guilt is a first step to our acceptance of them. Some of them, including Benny Morris, believe that these crimes were inevitable.

Now note how those who rail against "ethnic cleansing" and "crimes against humanity" integrate the recognition of the Zionist entity's right to exist into all sorts of international resolutions. Because once we have recognised the Zionist Entity, we can only speak about a catastrophe, a theft, a receding memory.

It is interesting, too, the way some people advocate "the right to return" for the Palestinians. Is there a difference between those who speak of "returning" and those who advocate a "right to return"? The difference between the two may not be clear at first glance. No one is suggesting that all Palestinians living abroad should be forced to go back if they don't want to. It is like the right to divorce or to sell -- it doesn't mean that you have to do it. This is why everyone likes to talk about the "right" to return, because it means that it can remain just that, an abstract right, an individual right even. Some people may prefer not to exercise it. Some may want to trade it for something else.

But a person who has a real way of returning wouldn't be speaking of the right to return, but simply of return. Such a person wouldn't be talking about return divorced from liberation for returning is unimaginable without liberation. So the issue for such a person would be the "way to return", which is the way of armed revolution, not "the right to return". Oddly enough, some of those who advocate the right to return avoid any reference to the Arab-ness of the land of Palestine, although the legitimacy of return stems first from the Arab-ness of the land that the Zionist occupation took away.

Another fashionable practice is to affix the term "racist" to all matters related to Israel and its policies. We have, for example, the "racist separation wall" and the "racist Zionist entity". We also have the "racist army of occupation" and sometimes "the recent racist announcement". Is our problem that the enemy is racist, or that it is occupying our land? The fact is that our concentration on "racism" twists our priorities. Do we want the occupiers to give us political and humanitarian rights, or our land back? What's at stake is not racism, but occupation.

The term "Nazi" has also been doing the rounds, and is routinely attached to everything Zionist or Israeli. You'd think that by using this term we're turning the table on our enemy, but think again. The Jews harp on about the Nazis to win international sympathy. When we imitate them, by using the same term as a byword for all evil, we are fortifying their case.

Finally, there is the oft-abused term "Palestinian national unity", which is commonly employed in reference to non-nationalists, to people, indeed, who cannot survive without security and political coordination with the Zionist enemy. How can "national unity" involve people who don't believe that Palestine is occupied in the first place?

On the 60th anniversary of the occupation let's rethink our epithets.