Palestinian exodus: Encyclopedia II - Palestinian exodus - The Nakba and its role in the Palestinian narrative

Palestinian exodus - The Nakba and its role in the Palestinian narrative

The Nakba or Al-Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, pronounced An-Nakba) is a term meaning "cataclysm" or "catastrophe". It is the term with which Palestinians usually refer to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, or more specifically, the Palestinian exodus.

The term Nakba was coined by Constantin Zureiq, a professor of history at the American University of Beirut, in his 1948 book Ma'na al-Nakba (The Meaning of the Disaster). After the Six Day War in 1967 Zureiq wrote another book, The New Meaning of the Disaster, but the term Nakba is reserved for the 1948 war.

Together with Naji al-Ali's Handala (the barefoot child always drawn from behind), and the symbolic key for the house in Palestine carried by so many Palestinian refugees, the Nakba is perhaps the most important symbol of Palestinian discourse.

Nakba Day (May 15th, the day Israel declared independence) is considered an important day in the Palestinian calendar, and is traditionally observed as a time to learn about the history of Palestine and to remember the event.

According to Palestinian author Dr. Ghada Karmi: "the majority of accounts of the Holocaust are in English, as opposed to accounts of the Palestinian Nakba, or “Catastrophe” (the creation of Israel in 1948) which are written mostly in Arabic. This ensures that everyone in the world knows about the pain and suffering of the Jewish people during World War II, whether they are in Europe, America, or even Asia, because English is the language of the decision-makers in the world. The number of Palestinian narratives that are written in English, on the other hand, can be literally counted on the fingers of one hand”. [4]. At the World Conference Against Racism in 2001, prominent Palestinian scholar and activist Hanan Ashrawi referred to the Palestinians as

...a nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing Nakba [catastrophe], as the most intricate and pervasive expression of persistent colonialism, apartheid, racism, and victimization. More than half a century ago [53 years], the Palestinians as a people were slated for national obliteration, cast outside the course of history, their identity denied, and their very human cultural and historical reality suppressed. We became victims of the myth of a land without a people for people without a land whereby the West sought to assuage its guilt over its horrendous anti-Semitism by the total victimization of a whole nation. [5]

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Nakba and its role in the Palestinian narrative", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki