Seventy-Five Years after the Nakba: What Does the Future Hold?
The Collapse of the “Jewish State” and the Rise of Human Rights
Nadia Hijab, Co-founder and Honorary President, Al-Shabaka
The present stage of the Palestinian struggle for human rights is, particularly in occupied Palestine, a frightening and heart-rending one. So many Palestinians of all ages and walks of life—but especially young men—are being killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers without even the slightest accountability. And so much carefully tended Palestinian land—the wealth of generations—is being destroyed and colonized. Indeed, this has been the fate of millions of Palestinians over the past century, during the various stages of this struggle for rights. The difference today is that Israel’s racist far right is determined to make this phase the endgame, to crush and destroy what is left of Palestine and Palestinians in the occupied territories and in “Israel proper” and to close off access to Palestinians in the diaspora, as well as to their allies. They intend to finish the job that earlier generations of Israelis began, while much of the leadership in the United States and Europe—as well as that in many Arab states and in official Palestinian bodies—close their eyes to reality.
Despite the grim present, the Palestinian people consistently aspire to a future that guarantees their human rights, including their right of return and compensation as set out in UN Resolution 194. In this future, Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews will live side by side—a core principle from the early days of the founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Israeli apartheid will have been dismantled and replaced with equal rights for all those living in the land of Palestine-Israel. The future will be built on a different reality than the one present today: Israeli Jews and Zionists around the world will have come to understand the role that many of them played in the dispossession of the Palestinian people. There will be recognition of how Palestine was destroyed in order to create Israel. There will then also be a formal expression of regret for that dispossession. And there will be a mechanism for reparations for Palestinian losses over these many decades. Recognition, regret, reparations; these must be the foundations of a just and peaceful future.
Of course, this sounds impossible at the present time. Israeli forces appear at their strongest, and Israeli officials are welcomed everywhere. But the signs of the future are here. In Europe, where national governments are still in thrall to Israel, major city governments, including Barcelona, Liège, and Oslo, have stepped to the fore this year to suspend ties with the country. In the United States, support for Palestinian rights is growing, including among Jewish groups. For example, Jewish Voice for Peace, which has 300,000 members, states that it “unequivocally opposes Zionism” because it runs counter to the organization’s ideals of “justice, equality and freedom for all people.” Meanwhile, the general discourse is shifting fast. Authoritative publications are questioning Israel’s democratic credentials and its ability to maintain what is effectively an apartheid regime. And opinion polls show Democratic US voters increasingly shifting away from Israel.
On the home front, this year has seen a welcome collaboration between the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, and Palestinian nongovernmental organizations in launching the first anti-apartheid conference against settler-colonialism. Their call harks back to the language used from the earliest days of the Palestinian national movement; it is a call that looks back in order to move into the future. Indeed, for the Palestinian movement and its allies to stay strong, they must avoid the errors of the past and sustain and grow their power while gaining strength from the knowledge that the future will be built on justice and human rights.
