From Occupied Palestine

"...namely the State of Israel"
URI AVNERY
3 May 2008

EVERY TIME I hear the voice of David Ben-Gurion uttering the words "Therefore we are gathered here..." I think of Issar Barsky, a charming youngster, the little brother of a girl-friend of mine.

The last time we met was in front of the dining hall of Kibbutz Hulda, on Friday, May 14, 1948.

Hamas' stand
MOUSA ABU MARZOOK
Los Angeles Times, 10 July 2007

DAMASCUS -- Hamas' rescue of a BBC journalist from his captors in Gaza last week was surely cause for rejoicing. But I want to be clear about one thing: We did not deliver up Alan Johnston as some obsequious boon to Western powers.

Out of sight maybe, but not out of mind
ZAFRIR RINAT
Ha'aretz, 13 June 2007

Driven by war to a No Man's Land in Jordan
Lives of Palestinian refugees from Iraq reflect six decades of dispossession
ANTHONY SHADID
Washington Post, 2 April 2007, p.A1

UN committee: Israel should let Palestinians return to their land
YOAV STERN
Ha'aretz, 11 March 2007

A United Nations committee has called on Israel to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their property and land in Israel and to ensure that the bodies responsible for distributing property, such as the Jewish National Fund, not discriminate against the Arab population.

Israel revisited
SCOTT WILSON
Washington Post, 11 March 2007, p. D1

Benny Morris, veteran 'New Historian' of the modern Jewish State's founding, finds himself ideologically back where it all began

Palestinian displacement: a case apart?
University of Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre
Forced Migration Review 26 (September 2006)

complete issue: PDF; Doc; single article PDF

Let's be Realists, let's demand the impossible!
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
In These Times, 30 August 2006

One of the most repulsive moments of the present Middle East conflict occurred after one of Hezbollah's rockets killed two Israeli-Arab children: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah pointedly apologized only for these deaths, thus making it clear that there is nothing to regret in the deaths of Israeli civilians. Doesn't this make clear the ethical difference between Hezbollah and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), which always regret civilian casualties among the Lebanese, perceiving them as a necessary evil?

The great catastrophe
KARMA NABULSI
Guardian, 12 May 2006

In the last week of April 1948, combined Irgun-Haganah forces launched an offensive to drive the Palestinian people out of the beautiful port city of Jaffa, forcing the remaining inhabitants to flee by sea; many drowned in the process. My aunt Rose, a teenager at that time, survived the trip to begin her life in exile on the Lebanese coast. Each Palestinian refugee family grows up hearing again and again the stories of those final moments in Palestine, the decisions, the panic, as we live in the midst of their terrible consequences. Throughout 1948, Jewish forces expelled many thousands of Palestinians from their villages, towns and cities into Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of others fled in fear. The purpose was to create a pure Jewish state, ethnically cleansed of the original inhabitants who had lived there for centuries. The creation of the state of Israel was the heart of this cataclysmic historical event for the Palestinians - the mass forced expulsion of a people; the more than 50 massacres carried out over the summer of 1948 by various armed Jewish forces; the demolition of villages to ensure the refugees could not return - all this is summed up in a single word for Palestinians: nakba, the catastophe.

The roots of Sharon's legacy
SALMAN ABU SITTA
al-Ahram Weekly, 26 January - 1 February 2006

Israel's policy towards the Palestinians was not only forged out of the experiences of European Jews at the hands of Nazi Germany, but it also replicates the brutality, writes SALMAN ABU SITTA

Zionist practice in Palestine has always been to grab the land and expel its inhabitants. It is a simple strategy that in today's world is denounced as a war crime, as ruthless ethnic cleansing.