Israel Penalizing Nakba Commemoration: One More Step Down the Path of Apartheid

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Badil Resource Center [3 March 2010]

The Israeli parliamentary Law Committee has recently approved a law proposal the (“Nakba bill”) that, if passed by the Knesset, would impose economic sanctions on the organizers of Nakba commemorations. Every year in May, Palestinians and supporters of their right of return commemorate the Nakba of 1948, which marks the single most traumatic and far-reaching event in the long and ongoing process of forced displacement and dispossession of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel. Nakba commemorations are important events in Israel, where some 335,000 Palestinians, citizens of Israel, continue to be denied their right to return to their homes, lands and communities, and are forced to live as internally displaced persons within their own country.

Palestinian citizens of Israel have experienced the Nakba (an Arabic
word meaning catastrophe) not only in 1948 but every day since then.

The “ongoing Nakba” is caused by Israel’s system of institutionalized racial discrimination which is composed of laws, policies and practices that have resulted in second-class citizen status of Palestinians, more land confiscation, discriminatory development planning, segregation of
Palestinian communities, home demolitions and forced evictions, in order
to ensure Jewish privilege and domination. Forcible displacement of
Palestinian citizens continues as result, in particular in the Naqab
(Negev), the Galilee and in towns with a ’mixed’ Jewish and Palestinian
population. Every aspect of Palestinian citizens’ life is affected by
Israel’s system of institutionalized racial discrimination, including an
education system that has worked to deprive Palestinian students of
knowledge of their history and identity.

The proposed “Nakba bill” forbids government-supported organizations
from spending money on activities that commemorate the Nakba, and will
deduct as much as ten times the amount of money they spent on such
activities from their budget. In effect, the bill requires that
Palestinian citizens of Israel deny their history and identity, and
identify with “Zionist values” that negate their Palestinian national
identity. It requires that Palestinians sanction their own historical
dispossession and accept their current status as second-class citizens
in the “Jewish state” and their detachment from the Palestinian people.

The Knesset prepares to discuss the Nakba bill at a time when it has
already passed another law that declares all Jews who have immigrated to Israel from Arab countries to be refugees. This law, similar to an
earlier resolution passed by the U.S. Congress, was passed in an attempt to cloud and undermine the quest for rights-based solutions for the Palestinian refugees. It aims to distract from the fact that the
individual and collective rights of refugees are not a matter of a
trade-off but to be examined on the merits of each case. As with all
refugees, including Palestinian refugees, Jewish persons who are
refugees under international law, must not be denied their right to
return to their places of origin.

In the 62nd year of the Palestinian Nakba, BADIL calls upon the
international community to condemn Israel’s Nakba bill and to hold
Israel accountable to its obligations under international law, including
its obligation to respect, protect and promote the right of all
displaced Palestinians to return to their homes of origin as part of
reparations.