Al Mayadeen English

  • Ar
  • Es
  • x
Al Mayadeen English

Slogan

  • News
    • Politics
    • Economy
    • Sports
    • Arts&Culture
    • Health
    • Miscellaneous
    • Technology
    • Environment
  • Articles
    • Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Blog
    • Features
  • Videos
    • NewsFeed
    • Video Features
    • Explainers
    • TV
    • Digital Series
  • Infographs
  • In Pictures
  • • LIVE
News
  • Politics
  • Economy
  • Sports
  • Arts&Culture
  • Health
  • Miscellaneous
  • Technology
  • Environment
Articles
  • Opinion
  • Analysis
  • Blog
  • Features
Videos
  • NewsFeed
  • Video Features
  • Explainers
  • TV
  • Digital Series
Infographs
In Pictures
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Asia-Pacific
  • Europe
  • Latin America
  • MENA
  • Palestine
  • US & Canada
BREAKING
SDF announces the killing of three of its members as a result of ISIS cells detonating a landmine targeting a vehicle of a security patrol on the Hasaka-Raqqa road
The Popular Resistance Committees: We call on all international institutions to take urgent action and uphold their responsibilities by restoring and immediately enforcing effective mechanisms for the distribution of humanitarian aid.
The Popular Resistance Committees: The latest Zio-American crime against Gaza’s starving civilians constitutes a war crime, for which the US administration bears full and direct responsibility.
Gaza Media Office: Bloody spectacle shows that these zones have become collective death traps rather than aid distribution zones.
Gaza Media Office: Dozens of citizens are still surrounded under constant fire in the vicinity of the "aid station."
Gaza Media Office: As soon as citizens arrived, occupation and Americans opened direct fire on them.
Gaza Media Office: Occupation, in complicity with the US company, called on citizens to move toward Wadi Gaza Bridge, claiming that aid would be distributed.
Gaza Government Media Office: Occupation set a bloody trap at bridge of Wadi Gaza, luring thousands of starved civilians, and opened fire on them.
Al Mayadeen's correspondent in South Lebanon: Israeli drone drops sonic grenade in town of Ramiyah.
Al Mayadeen's correspondent in South Lebanon: Israeli drone strike targets vehicle in town of Beit Lif.

The Nakba Is Ongoing, It Didn’t End In 1948

  • Robert Inlakesh Robert Inlakesh
  • Source: Al Mayadeen
  • 19 May 2022 23:08
  • 2 Shares
8 Min Read

For us to simply classify the Nakba as a single historical event, would be an incorrect framing, as the collection of atrocities visited on the Palestinian people by the Zionist regime represents an ongoing attempt to solidify the dominance of "Israel’s" settler-colonial project.

  • x
  • If
    If "Israel" had already completed its project, it would have declared its borders, it has never done this and is still in the process of carving itself a State out of the Levant

By now most people familiar with the Palestinian cause know well of the horrific ethnic cleansing campaign that took place between 1947-9, during the creation of the regime that calls itself “Israel”. Little however, know much about the ethnic cleansing ongoing today, or perhaps their knowledge is limited to isolated cases.

The Nakba, or ethnic cleansing of Palestine, is often defined as a historical event in which over half of Palestine’s villages, towns, and cities were destroyed, and 450 towns and villages depopulated of their Palestinian inhabitants, amounting to the forced ethnic displacement of around 800,000 people. The word Nakba means “catastrophe”, which is what is used to refer to that time, but when we speak of al-Nakba in English, what we are doing is using a term with which we refer to a historical event often meaning the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. 

Recently, Palestinian-American congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, introduced a House Resolution which would see the United States government recognise the Palestinian Nakba. “This Sunday [Nakba Day] was a day of solemn remembrance of all the lives lost, families displaced, and neighborhoods destroyed during the violence and horror of the Nakba. The scars bourn by the close to 800,000 Palestinians who were forced from their family homes and their communities, and those killed are burned into the souls of the people who lived through the Nakba,” said Tlaib. Although this would certainly be a major achievement to gain such recognition of Palestinian suffering, in essence meaning that the US government would be admitting the historic crime that the Zionist terrorist forces committed prior to declaring themselves a State, it is important that we not disconnect the past from the present.

The goal of today's Israeli regime is very much the same as it was back in 1947, to occupy as much land as possible, with as few Palestinians on it as possible. In order to achieve such a goal, the settler-colonial project has taken different forms and used various tactics over the past 74 years, yet that same goal remains intact. 

The 1950’s saw large-scale incursions into the Gaza Strip and the further displacement of more refugees during this process, whilst those Palestinians who remained inside what would become "Israel", were kept under military rule. Often known as the 1948 Palestinians, who today have Israeli citizenships, this portion of the Palestinian population consists of many who were considered to be “present absentees” by the Israeli regime, which translates to; the people who fled their villages and remained in what became "Israel" but were refused their right to return to their original villages. Israel quickly made use of laws implemented by the British occupation regime in Palestine, like ‘Article 125 of the Defense (Emergency) Regulations’, which Israel used as a legal basis for making Palestinian villages “closed military zones”, hence preventing the displaced natives from returning to their houses. Israel also implemented the 1950 Absentee Property Law, which is broad in its definitive language and would be used to declare displaced Palestinians as “absentees” in order to steal their homes. Between 1948 and 1950, it is also believed that Israel ethnically cleansed a further 40,000 Bedouin Palestinians, whilst also destroying more Palestinian villages along the Lebanese border and expelling thousands more Palestinians until 1956.

Related News

The Gaza Strip: From the Nakba tent to the CleansOcide, one personal story

The intellectual blah-blah: The 'rise' of fascist fascism in Israeli colonialism

In 1967, during what was called the ‘Naksa’ (setback), again the tactics slightly changed, Israel had decided to illegally occupy all of historic Palestine and even beyond, expelling 300,000 Palestinians from their homes in the process. In 1969, roughly 100,000 more were forced to flee villages around the Jordan Valley area after successive Israeli air raids and military assaults against both Palestinian and Jordanian villages. 

Without summing up all of the cases of ethnic cleansing throughout the 74 years of the Zionist regimes settler colonialist expansion, it suffices to say this, the very same tactics and laws are being used by "Israel" today to do the exact same thing they did in the past. 

In the Naqab, where the majority of Palestinian Bedouins live today, Israel is attempting to ghettoize the people there. This means forcing them into a small number of so-called “recognised villages” and ethnically cleansing some 40 unrecognized villages, this is a throwback to the suffering of the people of the Naqab during and after 1948, when Zionist forces rounded up the remaining 11,000 Bedouin’s - of a community that were 100,000 prior to 1948 - and forced them to live in an area called al-Siyaj, where they were under strict martial law rule until 1965. Israel is today using the Jewish National Fund to work on “agricultural projects”, similar to what occurred in 1948, in order to usurp the lands of Bedouins. 

In the West Bank, the largest portion of "Area C", is considered to be where “closed military zones” are, meaning that Palestinians are forbidden from entering these areas. In Area C (60% of the West Bank) it is also near impossible for Palestinians to get a building permit to construct a new home. The plan to ethnically cleanse the 1,000 Palestinian residents of the village of Masafer Yatta is just the latest in a long line of plans to expel Palestinians from their villages in the West Bank. Nevertheless, Israeli illegal settlers are granted a near carte blanche to establish outposts and settlements wherever they please, despite the fact that even by Israeli law many of these outposts are illegal. Israel is also using the “Absentees Property Law” to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homes in East al-Quds today, as we see in Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah, in addition to areas in Haifa and Jaffa. 

I had the pleasure of working on producing a short documentary with Redfish, called ‘The Palestinian Nakba: In Memory and the Present’, in which we interviewed survivors of the 1948 Nakba, as well as Palestinians from the younger generations who are surviving it today. Unfortunately, this short documentary report has been censored in all corners of the internet. Due to Redfish - like many other platforms that report information from an alternative and critical perspective - having been booted off of Youtube and other social media platforms, the voices and stories of Palestinians are by proxy being silenced. It is this sort of content that attempts to portray the true story of the Nakba from a Palestinian perspective, yet the public are being robbed off this knowledge.

For us to simply classify the Nakba as a single historical event, would be an incorrect framing, as the collection of atrocities visited on the Palestinian people by the Zionist regime represents an ongoing attempt to solidify the dominance of "Israel’s" settler-colonial project. To say that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine was simply taking place around the time of 1948 would be, in a way, bowing to the Zionist concept that their “State” model won and that the Palestinians have already been defeated. The Palestinian resistance is most certainly not defeated, this is an ongoing struggle and an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign, which fits into "Israel’s" settler-colonial ambitions. Naming one single event as The Nakba is correct, but when isolating the concept of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine to atrocities visited on Palestinians singularly during 1948, we begin to paint a different picture of what the true picture is.

Many of the same legal concepts, language, arguments, and tactics that were used to ethnically cleanse Palestine in 1947 are today being used to do the same thing and the examples of this are clear for all to see. This is an ongoing battle, one of a people - the Palestinians - who are fighting to expel an invading and occupying usurper entity - the Zionist regime. If "Israel" had already completed its project, it would have declared its borders, it has never done this and is still in the process of carving itself a State out of the Levant, therefore everything "Israel" is doing today is part of its expansionist mission and for it to stand as a ethno-supremacist “State” it must cement itself on all the land it illegally occupies. Israel has not achieved its goals and the Palestinians are not defeated, therefore the ethnic cleansing of Palestine only ends when one side wins.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Mayadeen’s editorial stance.
  • Nakba Day
  • Israeli Settlers
  • Palestine
  • Israeli occupation
  • Nakba
  • Palestinian cause
Robert Inlakesh

Robert Inlakesh

Political Analyst, Journalist, and Documentary Filmmaker.

Most Read

All
Although the background information does not indicate direct US involvement, considering the broader geopolitical context, it is plausible that the US would have an indirect impact. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Zeinab El-Hajj)

Did 'Israel', US fight a proxy war with China in South Asia during the India-Pakistan escalation?

  • Feature
  • 19 May 2025
The two countries need to sit down and resolve the crisis with maturity, to consider carefully that they could be being manipulated to be easily dominated. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Batoul Chamas)

Algeria and Mali, divided and almost conquered

  • Opinion
  • 25 May 2025
It may well be due to the longstanding relationship between MI6 and HTS, via Inter Mediate, that Britain was the first Western country to recognise their assumption of government in Syria. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Zeinab El-Hajj)

How MI6 helped HTS seize Syria

  • Opinion
  • 31 May 2025
Trump and Biden both pretended to be fighting Netanyahu

Trump and Biden both pretended to be fighting Netanyahu

  • Analysis
  • 28 May 2025

Coverage

All
The Ummah's Martyrs

More from this writer

All
Trump and Biden both pretended to be fighting Netanyahu

Trump and Biden both pretended to be fighting Netanyahu

It is clear that the Israeli project in Syria is not over and that Tel Aviv seeks to use what it sees as a historic opportunity to divide the country and achieve “Greater Israel”. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Zeinab El-Hajj)

The Israeli Syria Dilemma

Why the Israelis cannot win in Gaza or Yemen

Why the Israelis cannot win in Gaza or Yemen

The Zionist regime’s impunity has collapsed the post-WWII order

The Zionist regime’s impunity has collapsed the post-WWII order

Al Mayadeen English

Al Mayadeen is an Arab Independent Media Satellite Channel.

All Rights Reserved

  • x
  • Privacy Policy
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Authors
Android
iOS