In their May 5 piece “A Taboo Term,” Feras Abdulla ’17 and Reem Chamseddine ’17 present a view of the Palestinian “Nakba” and a history of the Israeli-Arab conflict that was most shocking not for the seeming atrocities it depicted but rather for the high level of selectivity with which the authors cherry-picked “facts” to support their argument. Throughout their op-ed, the authors relied almost entirely on a combination of half-truths and outright falsifications to provide a revisionist history of this tragic conflict.
From their initial descriptions of the Palestinian “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” the authors depict an image of incoming Israelis driving Palestinians from their homes in 1948 to supplant them with foreigners. Yet they failed to mention that most Palestinians were not expelled by Israeli forces but rather fled on their own during the 1948 war or left their homes at the urging of their own leaders when the surrounding Arab nations attacked the nascent state of Israel. The Palestinian inhabitants were assured that they could return to their homes after the Jews living in Israel were to be run into the sea by the invading Arab armies. In fact, the authors did not mention the war itself that led to the Palestinian refugee problem — a war started when the Arabs of the region opted for violence, not coexistence, by rejecting the United Nations Resolution 181 to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. In contrast, the Jews at the time overwhelmingly accepted this proposal that could have entirely avoided the war.
Continuing on in their incomplete recounting of history, the authors wrongly claimed that the death of the Oslo peace process came when Israel confined Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat to his compound. They failed to note, however, that this was only after Arafat chose to walk away from a historic peace offer from Israel in 2000, which included Palestinian control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem within their new state, to instead embrace and fund a campaign of terrorism against Israeli civilians as part of the Second Intifada. Furthermore, they also left out that the 2009 Israeli assault on Gaza was in reality a counteroffensive to put an end to the hundreds of rockets fired at Israeli cities during the prior week by the terrorist organization Hamas. Even their column’s core proposal that condemns Israel for firing on “Nakba” demonstrators neglected to note that the violence only occurred after protesters in 2011 broke across the militarized border from Syria and invaded Israel, thereby eliciting Israeli forces to respond to defend their borders.
The plight of the Palestinian people over much of the past century has without a doubt been tragic and catastrophic. However, this catastrophe is not the “Nakba” of the creation of the State of Israel, as understood by the Palestinian narrative and depicted by Abdulla and Chamseddine. Rather, the catastrophe has been the Palestinian leadership’s perpetual unwillingness to realize its own people’s aspirations for self-determination by refusing to make peace with Israel. Though no side has been without blame in this conflict, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been clear in his commitment to come to a peace and address the Palestinian refugee tragedy by achieving two separate states for two peoples. While Israel has shown itself willing to accept such a solution as far back as 1937, the Palestinian leadership has time and again walked away from Israel’s repetitive offers of peace and coexistence to instead opt for perpetual conflict and violence. Recognizing the Palestinian refugees’ suffering is not taboo, but dropping the blame for it entirely on the creation of Israel instead of on the Palestinian leadership’s continued intransigence is simply wrong.
Mayer Schein '16 and Adam Schneider '15 are guest columnists.
