|
|
The future of the Nakba
Massad, Joseph
http://electronicintifada.net/content/future-nakba/24236Date Written: 2018-05-13 Publisher: Electronic Intifada Year Published: 2018 Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX22505 If the Nakba’s most salient features are the theft of Palestinian land and the expulsion of the Palestinians from their land, and subjecting the lands that could not be stolen and the people who could not be expelled to systematic control and oppression, then, it would be most inaccurate to consider the Nakba as a discrete event that refers to the war of 1948 and its immediate aftermath. Rather, it should be historicized as a process which spanned the last 140 years, beginning with the arrival of the first Zionist conquerors to colonize the land in the early 1880s. In addition, Israeli leaders continue to regale their own people and the world with assurances that the Nakba is not just a past and present process of dispossessing the Palestinian people of their lands and expelling them, but rather one that must continue to preserve the future survival of Israel. The Nakba then turns out to be not just a past event and an ongoing process in the present, but a calamity that has a decidedly planned future ahead of it. If so, what might that future be? Subject Headings |