There Won't Be Peace Until Israel Accepts Responsibility for the Nakba - Opinion - Israel News Haaretz.com
Gideon
Levy: "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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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.
Gideon Levy
Haaretz Correspondent
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