From Generation to Generation. On Palestinian Dispossession.

[Tom Joad]

From Generation to Generation
by Karma Nabulsi Electronic Intifada

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4714.shtml
<snip>
Over the last two weeks Israeli citizens – both Jewish and Palestinian – joined together in almost daily marches, rallies and excursion trips to demolished villages on Zochrot’s Bus 194 (named after the UN Resolution of 1948 calling for the return of the expelled Palestinians to their homes). At a rally on the site of Umm al Zinnat, Salim Fahmawi, now 65, a primary school student when the soldiers entered the village 56 years ago to expel them, told an Israeli reporter: "The presence of so many young people, many of whom are third and fourth generation post-1948, gives me a sense of relief - because I know the torch has not been extinguished and is passing from generation to generation."

<snip>
Nakba commemoration is not an attempt to institutionalize a historical national trauma or from the fear that this memory will fade when that generation dies. Instead, because of the relentless and dynamic nature of the Catastrophe – because it is an ongoing daily Palestinian experience – the current attempts to destroy the Palestinian collectivity today bind this generation directly to that older one, and bind the exile to the core of the Palestinian body politic. Indeed the last few years have witnessed a phase of violent acceleration in this process of attempted destruction – hence the title of this year’s event: ‘The Nakba continues’.

The Nakba can be seen again today in the brutal thrust of the current policies of the Israeli state. More than 10,000 Palestinian refugees have been created by the construction of the concrete separation wall, condemned by the International Court of Justice as illegal but that nonetheless has expropriated huge new tracts of occupied land. This wall has turned cities like Qalqilya in the West Bank into ghost towns, and thousands of refugees have been created for the third and fourth time in the refugee camps in Gaza over the last five years. Yet it is not simply in the building of the walls and checkpoints by Israeli occupying forces or the different roads created for Jews and Arabs on Arab land, or the use of specially constructed bulldozers that rip up Palestinian orchards and olive groves on a daily basis and demolish hundreds of homes, or the imprisoning of thousands of political prisoners, or the daily murder of Palestinian civilians which demonstrates the relentless consistency, but in the way the total Israeli military and political machinery is dedicated to destroy Palestinian resistance to their project.

This resistance operates on two levels, for the Nakba operated – and operates today – on both. The first is the Palestinians’ physical effort to resist Israeli attempts to dispossess, disinherit, and physically control their land, to get rid of its people and to militarily control and legally disenfranchise those they cannot. The second lies in the Palestinians’ existential affirmation of their identity in the face of a systematic Israeli effort to fragment and destroy it, so that Palestinians will surrender, submit, forget. What is so interesting is that no matter how violently the first method is used by Israel, the second has been a complete failure: Palestinian identity is stronger than ever in 2006.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4714.shtml">Much More...
Comment:
I would add that despite the sometimes callous disregard of Palestinians human rights exhibited by the governments of the United States and Europe, I would say grassroots support for Palestinians and their quest for justice has never been stronger.

[tatertop]

1. You are definitely correct about grass root support for Palestinians

Little by little the word is leaking out, the people are waking up.

[Tom Joad]

2. Yes, despite every effort by some to bury the issue,

there is growing awareness and support.
I know here in the United States, among even mainstream liberal/progressive groups, more support for Palestinian rights, though it is often approached timidly and with fear of being attacked.
Look at the very courageous work of Progressive Democrats of America, for example, that supports clearly an approach based on international law.

The right-wing, of course, clings to its support for extremist policies promoted by AIPAC & Bush

Changing policy in the United States has almost as a direct effect on the movement for Palestine liberation as does changing Israeli policy.

[tatertop]

3. all true

[Name removed]

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