http://www.counterpunch.org/cook05182011.html
Jonathan Cook : A Taste of the Future?
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth,
CounterPunch May 18, 2011
They are extraordinary scenes. Film shot on mobile phones captured the moment on Sunday when at least 1,000 Palestinian refugees marched across no-man's land to one of the most heavily protected borders in the world, the one separating Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Waving Palestinian flags, the marchers braved a minefield, then tore down a series of fences, allowing more than 100 to run into Israeli-controlled territory. As they embraced Druze villagers on the other side, voices could be heard saying: "This is what liberation looks like."
Unlike previous years, this Nakba Day was not simply a commemoration of the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians in 1948, when their homeland was forcibly reinvented as the Jewish state. It briefly reminded Palestinians that, despite their long-enforced dispersion, they still have the potential to forge a common struggle against
As Israel violently cracked down on last Sunday's protests on many fronts -- in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem and on the borders with Syria and Lebanon -- it looked less like a military superpower and more like the proverbial boy with his finger in the dam.
The Palestinian "Arab Spring" is arriving and
Along the northern borders, at least 14 protesters were killed and dozens wounded, both at Majdal Shams in the Golan and near Maroun al-Ras in
In
And inside
With characteristic obtuseness,
But, in truth, Israeli intelligence has warned for months that mass demonstrations of this kind were inevitable, stoked by the intransigence of Israel's right-wing government in the face of both Washington's renewed interest in creating a Palestinian state and of the Arab Spring's mood of "change is possible".
Following in the footsteps of Egyptian and Tunisian demonstrators, ordinary Palestinians used the new social media to organise and coordinate their defiance - in their case challenging the walls, fences and checkpoints
Although the protests are not yet a third intifada, they hint at what may be coming. Or, as one senior Israeli commander warned, they looked ominously like a "warm-up" for September, when the newly unified Palestinian leadership is threatening to defy
Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, alluded to similar concerns when he cautioned: "We are just at the start of this matter and it could be that we'll face far more complex challenges."
There are several lessons, none of them comfortable, for
The first is that the Arab Spring cannot be dealt with simply by battening down the hatches. The upheavals facing
Just as the post-Mubarak government in
The second is that Palestinians have absorbed the meaning of the recent reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. In establishing a unity government, the two rival factions have belatedly realised that they cannot make headway against
Ordinary Palestinians are drawing the same conclusion: in the face of tanks and fighter jets, Palestinian strength lies in a unified national liberation movement that refuses to be defined by
The third lesson is that
But the question is whether
The fourth is that the Palestinian refugees are not likely to remain quiet if their interests are sidelined by
The protesters in
And the fifth lesson is that the scenes of Palestinian defiance on
* * *
From: Sid Shniad
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 11:05 AM
Subject: Jewish Voice for Peace Statement on the Nakba Day events
http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/blog/jvp-statement-on-the-nakba-day-events
JVP Statement on the Nakba Day events
On May 15th, massive nonviolent protests within and around Israel/Palestine
marked a historic day in the Palestinian struggle for human rights and full
equality. Matching the spirit and emboldened by the success of other Arab
Spring revolts, thousands of unarmed Palestinians demonstrated inside the
Occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and
thousands of Palestinian refugees peacefully marched to
from refugee camps in
the 63rd anniversary of the *Nakba*, or catastrophe in Arabic, a term used
by Palestinians to mourn their dispossession during the founding of the
State of
Nonviolent demonstrations are an inspiring component of the Palestinian
movement for justice—many
marches every week for several years--and just as common is violent Israeli
response to such unarmed protest. Yesterday’s protests, like those during
the “Arab Spring” earlier this year, are a grassroots response to occupation
and the denial of rights. Inspired by the Arab revolutions in
force and live fire. Yesterday, Israeli forces killed over a dozen unarmed
demonstrators.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) strongly condemns any violence against
civilians. We condemn and mourn the killing of unarmed activists in
demonstrations yesterday at the Lebanese border, the Syrian border, the Erez
Checkpoint of
wounding of dozens of additional protesters. One day before the protests, a
17 year-old Palestinian was killed in Silwan, in
by a settler. A Jewish Israeli was also killed on Nakba Day in an alleged
attack by truck in Tel Aviv, and several were also injured. We condemn all
these instances of violence.
While most Israeli Jews celebrate in May Israeli Independence Day, for
Palestinians May 15 is a day to mourn and remember the enormous toll they
paid for the founding of the state of
and towns were depopulated and destroyed and approximately 711,000
Palestinians became refugees.
As Haaretz recently documented, the Nakba is ongoing, as
canceled the residency status of 140,000 Palestinians from
1967-1994<http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-admits-it-covertly-canceled-residency-status-of-140-000-palestinians-1.360935>.
Today the revocation of residency status is particularly egregious in East
pace<http://www.acri.org.il/en/?p=1929>.
The Jewish National Fund even today creates forests on the rubble of
recently demolished homes, just as they did over the ruins of villages
destroyed in 1948. Jewish Voice for Peace supports the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, including the right of refugees to return to their own
countries. We believe that peace and justice will only be possible when
a mutually agreed, just solution based on principles established in
international law including return, compensation and/or resettlement.
Rather than come to grips with its history, the Israeli government is now
actively trying to suppress its memory, going so far as the passage of
the “Nakba
Law <http://972mag.com/nakba-law-inside-pandoras-box/>” earlier this year.
The new law criminalizes Nakba commemoration, making it possible for
institutions that mention it to lose funding. We are inspired by the efforts
of Zochrot <http://www.zochrot.org/en> and other groups inside of Jewish
Israeli civil society who are determined to keep on documenting and
commemorating the Nakba.
For many Jews, facing the Nakba is a profoundly unsettling process, one that
fractures what we have been told about our history and ourselves. Despite
the discomfort this may cause, we believe that understanding this history is
a critically important step toward a just peace. While we mourn the Nakba
and condemn yesterday’s deaths, we take heart and inspiration from the
resilience and perseverance of the nonviolent movement for justice. Join
us: www.jvp.org.
Click here for a pdf of JVP's Nakba Fact
Sheet<https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/301/images/Nakbafactsheet1.pdf>
.
See also: Why Jews need to talk about the
Nakba<http://972mag.com/why-jews-need-to-talk-about-the-nakba/>
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