al-Nakba the Palestinian Catastrophe Return to NAAJA Web site | Return to Arab American Resource Web Site | Email Hanania The creation of Israel in 1948 resulted in the displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinian Christians and Muslims, and another wave of refugees in 1967. The Palestine conflict was created when the United Nations decided against the will of the Palestinian population of the then-British Mandated territory, to divide the land into two-states using a map that divided the land into six regional segments that criss-crossed. Although the United Nations did its best to divide the land to separate the Jewish population, mostly immigrants to the territory during the 1920s and mostly after World War II, the proposed Jewish state still had a majority population that was Christian and Muslim. There were only a few Jews living in the propsed "Arab State." As a result, Jews were forced to expell Christians and Muslims from their state in order to maintain a majority population in the state they declared on May 14, 1948, "Israel." Since 1948, Israel has maintained a policy of discrimination that treats Jews differently from Christians and Muslims, even though Israel claims to give non-Jewish Israelis "equal rights." Christian and Muslim "citizens" of Israel are given a special number code on their identification and citizen papers that distinguish them from Israeli citizens who are Jewish. Additionally, non-Jewish cities, towns and villages do not receive the same, equal level of government support or funding. Since 1988, Palestinians have agreed to "recognize" Israel as a state in exchange for Israel recognizing the rights of Palestinians to exist as a state also. But, Israel has refused to dismantle the illegal Jewish-only settlements it created in the West Bank (seized with the Gaza Strip and Arab East Jerusalem in 1967), and continues to enforce policies that encourage Christians and Muslims of Arab heritage to both leave Israel and leave the occupied territories. In 1993, Palestinians and Israelis agreed to the two-state solution and sought to implement a plan to achieve the two sovereign states, but the Oslo Accords collapsed in the face of terrorist attacks by Hamas and by pro-settlement Israeli militants who murdered Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Rabin's successors, extremists Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon vowed to destroy the peace accords and set in motion policies that provoked Palestinians to violence and further undermining peace. In 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack sought to impose a lopsided settlement on the Palestinians with the support of President Bill Clinton and Dennis Ross, a self-avowed Zionist and American Jew who Clinton and Barack relied on as a partisan negotiator. Palestinian President Yasir Arafat offered to recognize most of the Israeli settlements in exchange for a one-to-one exchange of land, and accpted a compromise of East Jerusalem. But he refused to surrender the Palestinian Right of Return without first obtaining Israel's official acceptance of responsibility, and offer of compensation to the Palestinians and a public commitment that the Palestinian State would be sovereign. Arafat also asked that a limited number of Palestinian refugees be permitted to return to their original homes and lands stolen by the Israelis in 1948. Barak, who refused to meet with Arafat during the alleged Camp David negotiations, then walk out of the talks and initiated a campaign of slander to blame Arafat and the Palestinians for the failure of the peace accords. Barak was later defeated by extremist Ariel Sharon who suspended the peace accord and moved to increase Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank. ### |
Selected resources on a - Live from Occupied Palestine, blog record of the Palestinian al-Nakba. Click to view. b - The al-Nakba Archive, resources on the history of Palestine. Click to view. RECENT GOOGLE NEWS RSS FEED 
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