Abstract
When Israel celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1998, the Arab world, and especially the Palestinians in the Palestinian territories and abroad, marked the commemoration of what is perceived as a parallel event in Palestinian history—namely, the Nakba (the catastrophe). In the Palestinian national narrative, the establishment of the State of Israel indicates the moment of defeat and displacement of the Palestinian people. Whereas the events of 1947 and 1948—the partition and the War of Independence, respectively—indicate a national rebirth after the Holocaust and a cause for national celebration for Israeli Jews, for Palestinians “the same events are seen as an unmitigated disaster and are the focus of national mourning.”1 “What has been a success for one party has been a failure for the other party,” explains Ibrahim Dakkak, a leading PLO activist from Jerusalem.2
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Notes
Rashid Khalidi, “Truth, Justice and Reconciliation: Elements of a Solution to the Palestinian Refugee Issue,” in Ghada Karmi and Eugene Cotran, eds, The Palestinian Exodus, 1948–4998 (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 1999), p. 224.
“1948–1998 in the Eyes of Two Peoples: A Roundtable Discussion,” Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture 5, no. 2 (1998): 24. See also Joseph Samaha, salam ‘abir. Nahwu madd ‘arabi lil ‘mas’ala al-yahudiyya’ [A passing peace: Toward an Arab extension of “the Jewish Question”] (Beirut, 1993), p. 28; al-Sharq al-Awsat, 7 April 1998.
For a comparison of the Arab Israeli and the Palestinian discourses on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakba, see Hillel Frisch, “Ethnicity or Nationalism? Comparing the Nakba Narrative among Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza,” Israel Affairs 9, nos. 1 and 2 (Autumn/Winter 2003): 165–84.
Qustantin Zurayq, ma‘na al-nakba [The meaning of the Nakba] (Beirut, 1948).
Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “Intelligentsia: Time to Give Up the Ghost,” Civil Society 7, no. 77 (May 1998): 4.
Ibrahim Abu Lughud, “From the Nakba to the Defeat, Two Terms for Big Events,” in Y. Harkabi, ed., The Arabs and Israel (a collection of translations from Arabic), no. 1 (Tel Aviv, 1975, in Hebrew), p. 34. See also Ibrahim Abu Lughud, “The Nakba: This is What Happened,” Alpayim, no. 16 (1998, in Hebrew, Tel Aviv, Israel), pp. 152–57;
Fawwaz Turki, “To be a Palestinian,” Journal of Palestine Studies 3, no. 3 (Spring 1974): 4; The Palestinian People’s Appeal on the 50th Anniversary of the Catastrophe “al-Nakba,” http://www.pna.org/mininfo/nakba.
On the evasion of responsibility see also Sadiq Jalal al-‘Azm, al-naqd al-zati ba‘d al-hazima [Self-criticism after the defeat] (Beirut, 1969), p. 20;
for a Hebrew translation see Yehoshafat Harkabi, ed., Arab Lessons from their Defeat (Tel Aviv, 1969), pp. 71–115.
See also Yehoshafat Harkabi, The Arabs’ Position in their Conflict with Israel (Tel Aviv, 1968, in Hebrew), p. 345.
A. L. Tibawi, “Visions of the Return. The Palestinian Arab Refugees in Arabic Poetry and Art,” Middle East Journal 17, no. 5 (1963): 507–26; Reuven Snir, “‘One Wound of his Wounds’—The Palestinian Arab Literature in Israel,” Alpayim, no. 2 (1990, in Hebrew), pp. 244–68; Ray Hanania, al-Nakba: The Reality of a Dispossession, http://www.hanania.com;
Danny Rubinstein, The People of Nowhere: The Palestinian Vision of Home (Jerusalem, 1991).
Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York, 1997), p. 19;
Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People (New York, 1993), p. 182.
Issam Nassar, “Reflecting on Writing the History of Palestinian Identity,” Palestine-Israel Journal 8, no. 4 and 9, no. 1 (2001–2): 34–35.
Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi, Landscape in Mist: Space and Memory in Palestinian Cinema (Tel Aviv, 2006, in Hebrew), p. 57.
Mati Steinberg, “A Generation Goes and a Generation Comes: The Nakba and the Generation of Armed Struggle,” in Wars, Revolutions and Generational Identity, ed. Joseph Mali (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2001, in Hebrew), p. 123.
Trevor Legassick, “Some Recent War-Related Arabic Fiction,” Middle East Journal 5, no. 4 (1971): 491–505; Avraham Sela, “The Jew and the Israeli in Modern Arabic Literature,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 2 (Winter 1977): 125.
Ghasan Kanafani, Adab al-muqawama [The resistance literature] (Beirut, 1966), p. 10.
Yehoshafat Harkabi, ed., The Arabs and Israel 5 (TelAviv, 1970, in Hebrew), p. 65.
‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sharqawi, Watani ‘Akka [Acre my homeland] (Cairo, 1970), p. 191.
See Y. Harkabi, The Palestinian Covenant and Its Meaning (London, 1979), pp. 113–24.
Ahmad Sidqi al-Dajjani, al-intifadha al-filastiniyya wal-tahrir [The Palestinian intifada and liberation] (Cairo, 1988).
Salim Tamari, “Narratives of Exile,” Palestine-Israel Journal 9, no. 4 (2002): 107–8.
See for instance Zurayq, Meaning of the Nakba; Walid Qamhawi, al-nakba wal-bana`. nahwu ba‘th al-watan al-‘arabi [The Nakba and the construction: Toward the resurrection of the Arab nation] (Beirut, 1956);
Nadim al-Bitar, al-fa‘aliyya al-thawriyya fi al-nakba [Revolutionary efficiency in the Nakba] (Beirut, 1965); Harkabi, Arabs’ Position, pp. 346–47; Harkabi, ed., Arab Lessons, p. 15.
Ada Lonni, “Parallel Strategies in Israeli and Palestinian Experiences,” Journal of Palestine Studies 8, no. 4 and 9 no. 1 (2001–2): 71–83.
Ata Qaymari, “The Holocaust in the Palestinian Perspective,” in Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue, ed. Paul Scham, Walid Salem, and Benjamin Pogrund (Jerusalem: Yakar Center for Social Concern, 2005), p. 149.
Robert Faurisson, al-ukzuba al-tarikhiyya: hal fi‘lan qutila sitta malayin yahudi? [The historical lie: Were six million Jews killed?] (Beirut, 1988), p. 18;
Hazim Saghiya, difa‘an ‘an al-salam [Defending peace] (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar lil-Nashar, 1997), p. 69.
For a discussion of the representation of the Holocaust in the Palestinian discourse, see Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, “Perceptions of the Holocaust in Palestinian Public Discourse,” Israel Studies 8, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 123–41.
See for instance Muhammad Safwat, Isra’il al-‘aduw al-mushtaraq [Israel the shared enemy] (Cairo, 1952), p. 187.
See for instance Muhammad Fayiz al-Qasri, harb filastin, ‘am 1948. al-sira’ al-siyasi bayna al-sahyuniyya wal-‘arab [The war in Palestine: The political conflict between Zionism and the Arabs] (Cairo, 1961), p. 41.
Al-Hayat al-Jadida, 7 May 1998; Rosemary Sayigh, “Palestinian Camp Women as Tellers of History,” Journal of Palestine Studies 27, no. 2 (Winter 1998): 46.
Charles S. Maier, “A Surfeit of Memory? Reflections on History, Melancholy and Denial,” History and Memory 5, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 1993): 136–37; Guli Neeman-Arad, “A History of Memory: The Changing Status of the Holocaust in the Conscious of the Jews in the United States,” Zmanim, no. 57 (Winter 1996–97, in Hebrew): 19; New York Review of Books, 8 April 1999, p. 6.
Rashid Khalidi, “A Universal Jubilee? Palestinians 50 Years after 1948,” Tikkun 13, no. 2 (March/April 1998): 54–56;
Edward Said, The Politics of Dispossession (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), p. 121; al-Ahram Weekly, 14 May 1998.
Ghada Karmi, “The Question of Compensation and Reparations,” in The Palestinian Exodus, 1948–1998, ed. Ghada Karmi and Eugene Cotran (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 1999), p. 197.
Yezid Sayigh, “Reflections on al-Nakba,” Journal of Palestine Studies 27, no. 1 (Autumn 1998): 23; al-Hayat, 17 February, 19 April, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18 May, 28 June 1998; al-Quds, 15, 20, 27, 29 May 1998; al-Hayat al-Jadida, 5, 13–19, 23 May 1998; al-Ahram Weekly, 15 April 1998; al-Bilad, 26 January 1998; Rashid Khalidi, “A Universal Jubilee,” p. 55.
Elias Khouri, Bab al-Shams (Tel Aviv, 2002, in Hebrew), p. 180.
Anita Shapira, “Politics and Collective Memory: The Debate over the ‘New Historians’ in Israel,” History and Memory 7, no. 1 (1995): 33;
Robert Vitalis, “Crossing Exceptionalism’s Frontiers to Discover America’s Kingdom,” Arab Studies Journal 6, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 25.
On the early Palestinian historiography, see Beshara B. Doumani, “Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine: Writing Palestinians into History,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 13–17.
Rashid I. Khalidi, “Observations on the Right of Return,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 29.
For a Palestinian analysis of the right of return, see Badil Resource Center, The 1948 Palestinian Refugees and the Individual Right of Return: An International Law Analysis (Bethlehem, 2001).
Daniel A. McGowan and Marc H. Ellis, eds., Remembering Deir Yassin: The Future of Israel and Palestine (New York: Olive Branch, 1998).
Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinians, p. 152; Walid Khalidi, “Deir Yassine: Autopsie d’un massacre,” Revue d’études palestiniennes 17, no. 69 (Autumn 1998): 20–58.
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Webman, E. (2009). The Evolution of a Founding Myth: The Nakba and Its Fluctuating Meaning. In: Litvak, M. (eds) Palestinian Collective Memory and National Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230621633_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230621633_2
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