gideon Levy : Opinion There Won't Be Peace Until Israel Accepts Responsibility for the Nakba
The government of Israel
confirms once again: War crimes were committed in 1947-1948; there were
acts of slaughter, there was expulsion, there was ethnic cleansing –
there was a Nakba, a Catastrophe as the Palestinians call their
experience in those years. How do we know?
The
government is about to extend the confidentiality of one of the major
files in the Israel Defense Forces Archive that deals with the creation
of the Palestinian refugee problem. Sixty-eight years have gone by and
Israel is concealing the archival truth from itself – could there be any
clearer proof that it has something to hide? A senior official
explained to Haaretz diplomatic correspondent Barak Ravid (“Panel led by
Shaked likely to keep ‘Nakba file’ in IDF archive sealed,” September
20): “When peace comes, it will be possible to open those materials to
public viewing.”
Peace
is not going to come before the Israelis know about and understand how
it all began. Peace is not going to come before Israel accepts
responsibility, apologizes and compensates. There is no peace without
this. Perhaps there could be truth and reconciliation commissions like
in South Africa, or a bended knee and reparations like in Germany. This
could be the expression of an apology to the Palestinian people, partial
return and partial compensation for the property stolen in 1948 and
ever since. Just not denial and shirking of responsibility.
Peace
is not going to be prevented because the Palestinians are insisting on
the right of return. It will be prevented mainly because Israel is not
prepared to internalize the historical starting point: A people without a
country came to a country with a people, and that people experienced a
terrible tragedy that continues to this day.
That
people does not forget. And Israel will not be able to make them
forget. Israel despises Holocaust deniers – and rightly so. In many
countries it is a crime. In Israel people are angry at Poland, which has
prohibited by law mention of its part in the eradication of its Jews.
Austria, which has never properly confronted its past, is also deserving
of condemnation.
And
has Israel confronted its past? Never. The Jewish world demands
compensation for the property it left behind in Eastern Europe and the
Arab countries. Jews are allowed to return to Jewish property in the
West Bank and East Jerusalem. Confronting our past is just not something
we do. Different laws apply to us, laws of the chosen people and the
double standard. From the hump on our back – the one that is hidden in
archives and rises high from every refugee camp and ruined village – we
look away.
It
is possible in advance to dispense with the ire at the comparison to
the Holocaust: There is no comparison. But there are national disasters
that aren’t a holocaust and nevertheless are disasters. A terrible
disaster happened to the Palestinian people and Israel denies that
disaster and its responsibility for it. Its extent is far from that of
the Holocaust, but it is a terrible disaster. The denials can be
compared: Nakba denial beats denial of the Holocaust.
What
happened to the Palestinian people in 1948 and continued after the
establishment of the state, cannot be repressed forever. If Israel is
certain it is right, open the archives and prove it. Indeed, one of the
documents Israel is concealing is a study David Ben-Gurion commissioned
aimed at proving that the Arabs fled. If everything was moral, just and
legal, why aren’t they publishing it?
It
is enough to look at the photograph that accompanied the report in
Haaretz in Hebrew to refute the Zionist propaganda: Two Arabs push a
cart filled with bits of possessions, rugs and household goods, an old
man with a cane lags behind them and three Haganah men accompany them
with threatening rifles. Haifa, May 12, 1948. This is the appearance of
the “voluntary flight” of which the Arabs are guilty of having chosen.
And this of course is not the most shocking picture of the expulsion.
The
guilt lies heavy. It will not ease. For the expulsion, and even more so
for having prevented a return to the homes when the fighting ceased.
Absolute justice will not prevail here and the blame lies not only on
Israel’s shoulders. But the denial must stop. Convinced of our rightness
and strong in our state, the time has come to gaze squarely at the
truth and come to the obvious conclusion: Israel overloaded the cauldron
of suffering it causes the Palestinian people a long time ago. A long
time ago.
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