Summary
Constantine Zurayk’s book Ma‘na al-Nakba (The Meaning of the Catastrophe), written and published in late summer 1948, which introduced the term al-Nakba for the Arab defeat in Palestine (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.48). Labelled here as a document/work as Manna presents it; Manna is reporting Zurayk, not authoring the passages in question.
Details
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Manna calls it a modest-sized book, not a comprehensive study of the Arab defeat and its long-term significance but a report on the event itself, whose full details and scope were unknown at the time (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.48).
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Nevertheless Zurayk draws a clear and bold picture of the event’s meanings and, in Manna’s words, the book contains many important observations about the meaning of al-Nakba and its causes which required courage in those days (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.48).
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Manna’s Chapter 1 discussion (part 2): the first print run of August 1948 sold out quickly and the book was reprinted in October, with no update or addition despite the second cease-fire and worsening Arab disunity (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.49).
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Its opening section, ‘The Oppressiveness of al-Nakba’, outlines the catastrophe and its numbers before turning to the causes of the defeat and the way out — Arab responsibility, acceptance of that responsibility, and learning from mistakes (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.49).