War of Independence Or Nakba?

The Israeli Ministry of Education has decided that pupils (or at least Arab pupils!) are permitted to learn that the 1948 war was, in the eyes of the Arabs, a catastrophe - or, in Arabic, "Nakba".

Arab pupils know this already, of course. What is important is that Jewish pupils should also understand this.

In order for there to be real understanding between the two peoples, both need to see beyond the myths, conventional lies and historical falsities which form the basis of most Israeli and Palestinian propaganda. The Zionist narrative and the Palestinian narrative must be integrated in a unified history that does justice to both.

The State of Israel is strong enough to look honestly at past events.

As a contribution to this process, Gush Shalom has published a concise and comprehensive document of 101 points, entitled

TRUTH AGAINST TRUTH

which outlines the history of this conflict, from its beginning to the present day, including the events of 1948 - the War of Independence of the State of Israel and the Nakba of the Palestinian people.

Teachers, both Jewish and Arab, who are interested in background material for discussions with their pupils - and anyone else in both sides of the truth of both sides - are invited to order the brochure, or a set of brochures for a whole class, by writing to P. O. Box 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033, or phoning 03-5221732, or e-mailing .

The brochure is available in Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian and German.

The following are the relevant excerpts from the brochure:

29- The contrast between the two national versions reached a peak in the war of 1948, which was called "the War of Independence" or even "the War of Liberation" by the Jews, and "El Naqba", the catastrophe, by the Arabs.

30- As the conflict intensified in the region, and with the resounding impact of the Holocaust,the United Nations decided to divide the country into two States, Jewish and Arab. Jerusalem and its environs were to remain a separate entity,under international jurisdiction. The Jews were allotted 55% of the land, including the unpopulated Negev desert.

31- Most of the Zionist Movement accepted the partition resolution, convinced that the crucial issue was to establish a firm foundation for Jewish sovereignty. In closed meetings, David Ben-Gurion never concealed his intention to expand,at the first opportunity, the territory given to the Jews. That is why Israel's Declaration of Independence did not define the state's borders and Israel has not defined its borders to this day.

32- The Arab world did not accept the partition plan and regarded it as a vile attempt by the United Nations, which at the time was essentially a club of Western and Communist nations, to divide a country that did not belong to it. Handing over more than half of the country to the Jewish minority, which comprised a mere third of the population, made it all the more unforgivable in their eyes.

33- The war initiated by the Arabs after the partition plan was,inevitably, an "ethnic" war; a war in which each side seeks to conquer as much land as possible and evict the population of the other side. Such a campaign (which later came to be known as "ethnic cleansing") always involves expulsions and atrocities.

34- The war of 1948 was a direct continuation of the Zionist-Arab conflict, and each side sought to fulfill its historical aims. The Jews wanted to establish a homogenous national State that would be as large as possible. The Arabs wanted to eradicate the Zionist Jewish entity that had been established in Palestine.

35- Both sides practiced ethnic cleansing as an integral part of the fighting. Almost no Arabs remained in the territories captured by the Jews and no Jews at all remained in territories captured by the Arabs. However, as the territories captured by the Jews were very large while the Arabs managed to conquer only small areas (such as the Etzion Bloc, the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem), the result was one-sided. (The ideas of "population exchange" and "transfer" were raised in Zionist organizations as early as the 1930's. Effectively this meant the expulsion of the Arab population from the country. On the other side, many among the Arabs believed that the Zionists should go back to wherever they came from.).

36- The myth of "the few against the many" was createdon the Jewish side to describe the stand of the Jewish community of 650,000 against the entire Arab world of over a hundred million. The Jewish community lost 1% of its people in the war. The Arab side saw an entirely different picture: A fragmented Arab population with no national leadership to speak of, with no unified command over its meager forces,poorly equipped with mostly obsolete weapons, facing an extremely well organized Jewish community that was highly trained in the use of the weapons that were flowing to it (especially from the Soviet bloc.) The neighboring Arab countries betrayed the Palestinians and, when they finally did send their armies into Palestine, they mainly operated in competition with each other, with no coordination and no common plan. From the social and military points of view, the fighting capabilities of the Israeli side were far superior to those of the Arab states, which had hardly emerged from the colonial era.

37- According to the United Nations plan, the Jewish State was supposed to receive 55% of Palestine, in which the Arabs would constitute almost half of the population. During the war, the Jewish State expanded its territory and ended up with 78% of the area of Palestine,which was left almost empty of Arabs. The Arab populations of Nazareth and some villages in the Galilee remained almost by chance; the villages in the Triangle were given to Israel as part of a deal by King Abdullah and their Arab inhabitants could not, therefore, be driven out.

38- In the war, some 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted. Some of them found themselves in the battle zone and fled, as civilians do in every war. Some were driven away by acts of terror, such as the Deir-Yassin massacre.Others were systematically expelled in the course of the ethnic cleansing.

39- No less important than the expulsion itself is the fact that the refugees were not allowed to return to their homes when the fighting was over, as is usual after a conventional war.Quite the contrary, the new State of Israel saw the removal of the Arabs very much as a blessing and proceeded to completely erase some 450 Arab villages. New Jewish villages were built on the ruins, often adopting a Hebrew version of the former name. The abandoned neighborhoods in the towns were filled with masses of new immigrants. In Israeli textbooks, all mention of the former inhabitants was eliminated.

[Text published July 25, as a large ad in Haaretz.]

GUSH SHALOM p.o.b. 3322 Tel Aviv 61033
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