The Nakba of 1948

We can even debate whether one can at all be considered a refugee when they've merely been rehoused some tens of miles away in the same country. If a group was forced to relocate from Hastings to Brighton, would they be classed as refugees?

Yes, what would you call it if a particular part of the population was moved into a city (e.g. Brighton), had borders put round it so that population couldn't leave, and then was made stateless?

So if a particular heritage was moved into Brighton and the UK then simultaneously controlled its borders and also denied it was part of the UK and therefore the UK was not responsible for it or the people in it.

I don't think we do have words for that but it feels very wrong.

My main point is that there is nothing unique about the 1948 displacement.

as Ive mentioned , there is no point in downplaying it, all these events are documented,

people were forcefully moved out< , those who resisted were killed> to make way for people coming from Europe , the only ties these people they had to this new land are religious ones .
prior to that, all worshipers of the three major religions , Christianity , Judaism , Islam coexisted in that country.
Some people moved to Jordan , some to Lebanon , Syria, these countries were still coping from the after math of the French mandate that ended a couple of years earlier ,
I don’t even need to explain just how challenging it is for smallish and not relatively rich countries to accommodate refugees .

“their grievances “

yes, unfortunately it’s beyond obvious that this conflict will not make Israel safer. The orphaned children will one day grow up. The widowed husbands and the parents whose children were killed in front of them, in the most awful ways, will have nothing left to lose or live for. They will want revenge. Will we be asked to condemn what they do in a few years?

I agree that there will be some who want revenge but I don’t agree that we should accept revenge as inevitable or acceptable. It is nearly always the innocent who suffer and therefore revenge should DEFINITELY be condemned. It just perpetuates the cycle of violence.
It is much more important ( and difficult) to END the cycle of violence.
Yes - there must be justice for Palestinians.
No - they will not achieve justice through terror attacks like October 7th on innocent people.

I will always condemn terror attacks and saying it is revenge for the Nabka doesn’t make it OK .
But it is important to understand the reasons for the bitterness Palestinians feel and to work towards a just solution. It will not be possible to please everyone. Some people will feel there grievances were not addressed.. but for the sake of a better future for their children that is a price worth paying.

ER2 probably should refrain from the "debate" until he/she has read up on international law.

@ER2 while I agree with some of what you're saying, I don't think this is the time nor the place for these discussions. You can always start a new thread if you want to discuss eg refugee status being passed down from generation to generation, but if so I'd suggest phrasing it carefully to ensure you are respectful and don't cause offence. It's the best way to get an answer to your questions.

What a blissfully ignorant post, full of misinformation, all of which seems to be in attempt to minimise the ongoing horrendous atrocities towards Palestinians.

Thank you for this information. It is really helpful context for people who don’t know the history. Violence breeds violence and the horrors of the Holocaust may have contributed to the damaged mindset that made the horror of the Nabka possible. It always seems to be the innocent who suffer for the crimes of others.
The challenge is how to move on and look to the future. With each new atrocity that becomes harder and harder. The innocent on both sides have suffered and the damage is psychological as well as physical, emotional, financial . It is heartbreaking because violence just breeds more violence. “An eye for an eye and eventually the whole world becomes blind “

Legally everyone who has been displaced is a refugee. You don't lose that status over time or if you get citizenship of another country. Jews brought into UK post Holocaust are considered refugees. Nowadays with the Daily Mail headlines we tend to only think of brown Muslims as refugees, but it's not the case.
There's nothing "special" about it, it's a tragedy when someone is forcefully displaced from their home due to risk of death. It's a double tragedy that the Palestinians are being displaced and have no right to return to their homeland.

Thank you for this vital thread, OP. I’ve been listening to many podcasts from the Palestinian perspective.

My Irish grandfather died young in 1960, 12 years before my birth. But his words around the Nakba have lived on in my family. He said, “They will never forget. Their children will never forget. Their children’s children’s children will never forget.” His words haunted me as I listened to episode 819 of This American Life- ‘Yousef’s Week’. Shattered my heart listening to this Palestinian man talk. I cried. It’s all I can do. Cry.

Here is a video that was linked within the Guardian article about what happened at Tantura, and the investigation into mass graves, along with survivor testimonials.

hi OP thank you for this thread. I have been horrified by what I have seen the last few months so this is a timely reminder of what went on and I think a lot of people are unaware of how violent and awful the Nakba was.

And as Palestinians feel, it is going on right now.

I found this recent Guardian article about how they have identified three possible mass graves of Palestinians killed during the Nakba in Tantura. Chilling stuff.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/25/study-1948-israeli-massacre-tantura-palestinian-village-mass-graves-car-park

Its pretty brazen to straight up admit that ethnic cleansing is the plan.

Thanks for the thread, the parallels between 1948 and now are frightening. We are seeing nakba #2 and I don't know where it will end.

The Text of Plan Dalet:
http://www.jmcc.org/Documentsandmaps.aspx?id=755

There were so so many aka Plan Dalet.

https://imeu.org/article/explainer-plan-dalet-the-ethnic-cleansing-of-palestine