On the 70th anniversary of the Nakba the contrast could not have been more different on Monday 14, between Jerusalem and Gaza, even as a mere 75 kilometres separated the two. As American and Jewish officials inaugurated the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem, Jewish forces gunned down Palestinian protesters in Gaza, the death toll rising inexorably throughout the day. Just outside the new embassy, Palestinian demonstrators in Jerusalem were brutally repressed by Zionist forces. “Burn them”, “shoot them”, “kill them”, Jews chanted. On May 14th 1948, 70 years ago, Britain fulfilled its war time promise to the Jews of establishing a state for it in Palestine. The day after Jews proclaimed their new entity, expelling the indigenous people.
Comment:
It was mind boggling back in 1948 how 40 million Arabs could not match the fighting strength of just 600,000 Zionists. This question remains today as the 8.5 million Zionists are surrounded by over 400 million Muslims. The reality in 1948 was the Egyptian monarchy, Jordanian monarchy and Iraqi monarchy were put in place by the British and they were more interested in maintaining their thrones than fighting the Zionists. As Britain maintained or established their rule they were not going to go against their masters.
Anwar Sadat in his biography highlighted what led to the creation of the Free Officers that would go onto to overthrow the monarchy in Egypt in 1952. The creation of the Jewish entity and the loss of Palestine led to the army to coalesce around a small group of mutineers who came to be known as the Free Officers. The Egyptian government had weakened the attack against the Jewish entity when Nakrashi Pasha, the Prime Minister, did not use existing military units but sent an army of volunteers that had only been organised a few months earlier.
Although Nasser of Egypt took leadership over liberating Palestine, the difficulties experienced by him during the Suez crisis in 1956 and the Six Day War in 1967 contributed to a waning of support for the Palestinian cause. By the mid 1960’s, Nasser opened a channel of communication with the Jewish officials through the respective delegates to the United Nations to explore the possibility of a permanent peace settlement. His comrade, Anwar Sadat, would sign the peace treaty with the Jewish entity in 1979. This ended state-to-state war against the Zionist and led to the emergence of non-state actors who took on the task of liberating Palestine.
The Arab regimes had all but abandoned the Palestinian cause, and this was when Yasser Arafat, a graduate of the Cairo University working in Kuwait as an engineer, established FATH meaning victory. It initially entered into armed struggle but unable to face-off with the Jewish entity’s large military (relatively) and they very quickly turned to negotiations. Unable to impose any type of settlement on the Palestinian issue, the PLO compromised and gave up more and more land in the hope of getting a Palestinian state. In 1993 in a Letter from Arafat to Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of the Jewish entity, Arafat said: “The PLO recognises the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.” The PLO strengthened the Jewish entity by entering into negotiations and compromising with everything that it stood for. By recognising the Jewish entity, it accepted giving up the land that has been occupied by the Jews.In the end, rather than liberating the people of Palestine, it sold them out.
Ahmad Yassin established Hamas as the Muslim Brotherhood’s local political arm in 1987, following the outbreak of the first intifada. The following year, Hamas published its charter, calling for the destruction of the Zionist entity and the establishment of an Islamic society in historic Palestine. Hamas’s original leadership viewed militancy as a means to a political end. Sheikh Ahmad Yassin argued that Hamas was a political movement and it would fight for the rights of Palestinians, with the objective of eliminating the Jewish entity. Its main problem was that it received arms, training and finance from Iran due to Iran’s aim of curtailing and competing with the Jewish entity in the region. Hamas has, since its inception, tried to demonstrate that it is a political movement that has political aims of establishing an entity in Palestine, but its use of violence against a much larger and resourceful Jewish entity has led its leaders and senior members to compromise for political recognition. These numerous compromises have, in effect, diluted Hamas to a mere pragmatic actor in the region and also justified the Jewish entity. Khaled Mashal, who has been Hamas’s politburo chief until 2017, on numerous occasions has stated that he accepted the 1967 borders and the two state solution.
The Ummah of Palestine have been abandoned by the regions rulers on the 70th anniversary of the Nakba. Despite possessing the capability, they do not move to liberate Palestine. But in the turbulent history of the Muslim world, perhaps no struggle has captivated the people more than Palestine. Despite numerous conspiracies to normalise the Jewish entity’s existence, Palestine remains an issue for over 1.6 billion Muslims despite what the rulers have done.
Adnan Khan