On December 9, 2018, in Ramallah, Mahmoud Abbas was addressing the PLO Central Council when, for a moment, he let personal memory cut through the familiar myth of 1948.
“Everyone began speaking on our behalf in our absence; that is why we could do nothing,” he said. “And you remember, if you remember, that in 1948, when the Nakba happened, we were not part of it. They took us out and told us: In one week, we will bring you back.”
The video can also be found on YouTube.
It was not, of course, the first time Abbas had dared to say something closer to the truth about the notorious “Nakba” publicly. Nor would it be the last. The most recent instance was only two years ago. The first one occurred in 1976, in an article he wrote for Falastin al-Thawra, then the PLO’s official publication, published in Beirut.
Abbas — Abu Mazen — wrote then: “The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from Zionist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live.”
In 1948, the Arabs of Palestine had rejected the United Nations decision to establish a Jewish state on a small part of the ancestral land of the Jews, within what is today the territory of Israel.
It is worth recalling that the Arabs of Palestine regarded the geographical designation “Palestinian” as derogatory. First, because it had been imposed by foreigners centuries earlier, and there had never been a nation by that name. Second, because they regarded themselves as Arabs, which, of course, they are. Third, because the Jews of Palestine had no difficulty using the same term, precisely because it referred only to the region and therefore applied to them as well.
The other Arab leadership — what Abbas was referring to or rather admitting — told the Arabs living under what was then the British Mandate of Palestine to leave. The purpose was clear: to clear the ground for the real genocide, the one that has since remained an unfulfilled dream in the minds of the Arabs of former Palestine — the genocide of the Jews. This is where the “one week” narrative fits in. So do the keys they all took.
After all, both historically and today, when asked about coexistence with Jews, Palestinians — now in national terms as well — say that the Jews must leave, or… I can attest to that myself, on what I saw and heard in Ramallah and elsewhere.
The attempted ethnic cleansing of 1948 failed, despite the Arabs’ overwhelming military superiority. Three-quarters of the Arabs of Palestine ended up either in the newly established Jordanian state — created in 1946, formerly Transjordan, a British protectorate since 1921 — or in neighboring countries, mainly in what would become the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as the Gaza Strip. Those territories were seized by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, as they exploited the war.
No one then raised the issue of a Palestinian state.
Their capture by Israel came in 1967, after the second Arab attempt to ethnically cleanse the Jews — an attempt that ended in an even greater humiliation for the would-be perpetrators of genocide.
Back to 1948 and the “Nakba,” around 722,000 Arabs of Palestine ended up outside the newly established State of Israel. Around 180,000 heeded the appeals of the Jews and stayed. Then, as now, they made up roughly 20 percent of Israel’s population. They are citizens with the same rights as Jews, Christians, and Druze. They elect around ten members of the Knesset, who freely criticize Israel from the parliamentary podium, often in the harshest terms.
Were there expulsions? Of course, there were. Israel has never denied this. Nor, in any case, would one expect there to have been none in the midst of a war. At a time when Jews were under attack and facing bloody pogroms by Arabs, the earliest of them as far back as 1834 in Safed. Then came the major ones: Safed in 1838; Jerusalem in 1920; Jaffa in 1921; Hebron and Safed in 1929; the attacks on convoys during 1936-39; and Tiberias in 1938.
To this one must add the role of the notorious Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who met Hitler in order to assist him in his plans.
One of the most important works of Israeli literature, “Khirbet Khizeh” by S. Yizhar — by no means an easy book to read — also describes Jewish responsibility for the expulsions mentioned above. It does so through the dilemma of a man who knows that he has nowhere else to go, but also that, in order to survive, he must displace others. It is taught in schools. Jewish schools, that is.
Speaking of education: a few days ago, as they do every year, Arab students, citizens of Israel, held an event at Tel Aviv University to mark the “Nakba.” The photo is from that event. Across from them, Jewish Israelis — most of whom did not appear to be students — also demonstrated, holding banners. The main slogan read: “Are you celebrating because you failed to slaughter us?” The police were present discreetly, as they are every year. Once again, there was no need for them to intervene.
History does not become less true because it is inconvenient. In times of fanaticism, antisemitism, and distortion, it must be told with greater clarity, not less.
