How David Ben-Gurion got the Palestinians wrong in 1948

When European Jewish settlers embarked connected brutal taste cleansing to found Israel successful 1948, they thought the Palestinian colonisation would beryllium the slightest of their problems. In fact, Zionist leaders similar David Ben-Gurion believed that “the exile occupation would resoluteness itself”.

There was deep-seated condemnation among Zionists that the Palestinians lacked an identity, and they would conscionable fly to neighbouring Arab countries and assimilate. They would not travel backmost to assertion their stolen land.

But what happened was the nonstop opposite.

Decade aft decade, the Palestinian nationalist origin grew stronger. Today, fewer survivors of the Nakba of 1948 remain, but the nationalist committedness to Palestinian rights and humanities justness is arsenic beardown arsenic ever. That is due to the fact that the older generations did not thatch the younger ones to hide the trauma and determination on; they taught them to retrieve and to support the keys to their ancestral homes successful their minds.

The “refugee problem” did not “resolve itself” not conscionable due to the fact that of Palestinian determination and resilience, but besides due to the fact that the Israeli policies of unit and dispossession backfired.

Israel’s theft of onshore and resources and convulsive displacement of Palestinians was the starting constituent for each Palestinian procreation to cull and defy occupation.

As Israel succeeded successful usurping much and much Palestinian land, it failed miserably successful controlling the Palestinian consciousness.

Despite continuous Israeli efforts to crook exile camps into isolated enclaves, enlistee agents and collaborators to undermine unity, and present planetary bodies to redefine the exile contented arsenic a purely humanitarian one, it failed to dismantle the Palestinian nationalist cause.

Those who were dispossessed and violated – the Palestinian refugees – became the astir ardent carriers of the thought of resistance. Refugee camps became the centres of peaceful and equipped struggle. These camps gave commencement to salient Palestinian thinkers, doctors, educators and leaders, who dispersed 1 message: the rejection of the Israeli concern and the insistence connected Palestinian rights.

Palestinian refugees were the drivers of the archetypal Intifada of 1987 and the 2nd Intifada of 2000. They were astatine the centre of immoderate consequent mobilisation to defy the Israeli occupation.

The assemblage task saw nary enactment but to ratchet up its brutality. Repeated massacres, wide imprisonment and relentless efforts to uproot communities did not execute subjugation. This attack failed and the Gaza Strip – wherever 80 percent of the colonisation are refugees – stands arsenic the clearest grounds of that failure.

After the motorboat of its genocidal battle connected Gaza successful October 2023, the Israeli authorities repeatedly described the warfare arsenic “existential”. If Israel itself acknowledges contiguous that the 4th procreation of Palestinians, the descendants of the survivors of the Nakba, correspond a menace to its existence, past this is successful itself an admittance of the illness of Ben-Gurion’s prediction and the strategical nonaccomplishment of the Israeli task to destruct the Palestinian people.

But Israel has not conscionable failed, it has besides go trapped. It is stuck successful the paradox of the futility of its ain brutal power. The much violence, wide killings and displacement it carries retired and the much it reproduces the Nakba, the much determined the Palestinian radical go to resist. Repression is not uprooting Palestine, it is helping it instrumentality deeper root.

The Gaza genocide is possibly the champion illustration of this deadly paradox. More than 72,000 Palestinians person been massacred, much than 170,000 injured, and 1.9 cardinal displaced. Most homes person been damaged oregon destroyed.

What is the effect of each this? When a Palestinian kid is calved contiguous successful a structure and grows up without astir of his family, without a school, a playground, due healthcare, oregon a home, helium oregon she won’t request a analyzable humanities communicative to recognize who is liable for this and what needs to beryllium done to execute justice.

But the self-defeating interaction of Israeli brutality is not constricted to Palestine alone. Israel’s genocide has backfired connected a planetary scale. It has allowed the Palestinian origin to turn beyond the confines of a marginal, left-wing contented into 1 that progressively attracts attraction crossed the governmental spectrum successful the West but besides elsewhere successful the world.

Activists and mean citizens of antithetic governmental convictions present basal successful solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Many bash so, contempt facing retribution, apprehension and prosecution for their enactment of Palestinian rights.

The Palestinian origin has besides go an influential origin successful section elections successful galore countries, including the United States and United Kingdom, wherever enactment for the Israeli concern and genocide tin outgo candidates an electoral win.

As a result, the Palestinian contented has grown beyond a determination conflict to go a defining motivation question for radical crossed the world.

This has near the concern locked successful a imperishable confrontation with what cannot beryllium defeated: memory. The much it tries to erase the Palestinian cause, the much it is etched successful the Palestinian and planetary consciousness.

If helium had been live today, Ben-Gurion would person been dismayed to larn that Zionism secured its ain decision the infinitesimal it embarked connected the Nakba.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.