Summary
The Palestinian term for the catastrophe of 1948. In The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Pappe notes that the term refers more to the disaster itself than to who or what caused it, and argues that in leaving out the actor it may in a sense have contributed to the continuing denial of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Details
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Pappe on the two competing narratives of 1948: the Zionist/Israeli version claims the local population left ‘voluntarily’, while “the Palestinians talk about the ‘catastrophe’, the Nakba, that befell them, which in some ways is also an elusive term as it refers more to the disaster itself rather than to who or what caused it” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.20).
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The term Nakba was adopted, Pappe says, for understandable reasons, as an attempt to counter the moral weight of the Jewish Holocaust (Shoa), but in leaving out the actor it may have contributed to the continuing denial by the world of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and after (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.20).
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Pappe writes in the Acknowledgements that ever since he learned about the Nakba he has carried with him the suffering, loss and hopes of the Palestinian victims of the 1948 ethnic cleansing, to whom the book is written first and foremost (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.12-13).
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In Pappe’s usage the Nakba is the event the US and UN definitions of ethnic cleansing seem almost to have been inspired by, “down to almost their last minute detail” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.31).
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In Pappe, Chapters 11-12 and the Epilogue: the Nakba and the refugee issue have been consistently excluded from the peace agenda, by peace brokers sidelining the Palestinian cause and by Israel’s categorical refusal to acknowledge the Nakba or accept accountability (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.273). Denial of the Nakba stems, in the close of Chapter 10 and the argument of Chapter 11, from the Zionist ideology of ethnic supremacy (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.270). Israelis and Palestinians join in annual pilgrimages to destroyed villages and Nakba commemoration on Independence Day, and Pappe vows to protect the memory of the Nakba against denial (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.297). See Right of Return, Memoricide.
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Sitta’s register quantifies the Nakba locality by locality under the running head “THE PALESTINIAN NAKBA”: 531 fully depopulated localities and 662 partially depopulated, 1,193 in all, with a 1948 Arab population of 804,465, 17,184,463 dunums of land, and 4,940,269 refugees in total estimated for 1998 (The Palestinian Nakba 1948 — The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine, PDF p.20).
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In Manna, the term was introduced by Constantine Zurayk in Ma’na al-Nakba, written and published in late summer 1948, to describe the Arab defeat in Palestine; Zurayk warned it could turn into a greater disaster if its causes were not addressed quickly (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.48).
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For Manna’s subjects, the Remainers, the Nakba is also the founding trauma of the Palestinian minority inside Israel: they experienced its full trauma, were isolated by the new borders from the Arab world and the rest of their people, and carried on the struggle to remain against expulsion policies until 1956 at least (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.28, 30).
Related pages
The Palestinian Nakba 1948 — The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ethnic Cleansing, Ilan Pappe