Nakba Day

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:55): On 15 May every year, Palestinian people around the world commemorate Nakba Day. Nakba Day refers to the 1948 Palestinian exodus—also known as Al Nakba, literally meaning 'disaster' or 'catastrophe'—which occurred when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1948 Palestine War.

The term 'nakba' also refers to the period of war itself and events affecting Palestinian people from December 1947 to January 1949. Between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were sacked during the war, while urban Palestine was almost entirely extinguished. Many of the Palestinian refugees settled in refugee camps in neighbouring states.

The status of the refugees, and particularly whether Israel will grant them their claimed right to return to their homes or be compensated, is a key issue in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The events of 1948 are commemorated by Palestinian people both in the territories and elsewhere on 15 May, which is, as I said a bit earlier, known as Nakba Day.

This is the background to the most recent conflict. It is important to remember this context because omitting it provides a distorted and misleading understanding of the current hostilities. Over the past few weeks, 232 Palestinians and 12 Israelis have been killed in the current Israeli-Palestinian hostilities. Any loss of life, whether it is Palestinian or Israeli, is cause for great sadness and sorrow.

Sadly, a great deal of the commentary about this recent breakout of hostilities has been disappointing, unhelpful and, in some cases, misleading. The conflict has been framed in the context of two factors: Israel has the right to defend its people, and the dispute is over eviction matters in Jerusalem, particularly East Jerusalem.

Every nation has the right to defend themselves, including the Palestinian people who live in Palestine. This is the point that most commentators, predominantly on the conservative side of politics, appear to omit from their commentary. The land dispute in Jerusalem is no minor matter between a landlord and tenant. It is a major conflict between an occupying force and a native population opposing their dispossession from their homelands.

The actions of the Israeli government to sanction new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem are not only a breach of international law but also a breach of the laws that govern war. An occupying force is not permitted to dispossess local people from their homes or land. Sadly, in the same way the Israeli government has supported the ongoing annexation of parts of the West Bank, they are now doing the same in East Jerusalem. The world looks on, despite Israeli action being contrary to a number of United Nations General Assembly and Security Council decisions.

President Trump's decision to relocate the US embassy away from Tel Aviv sadly gave the Israelis the green light to move into East Jerusalem. It appears that the current Israeli government has no intention of slowing down the annexation of Palestinian lands for new Jewish settlements, so to ask the Palestinian people to be patient and peaceful while their homes are bulldozed on a daily basis is both unfair and immoral.

It is instructive to listen to the Israeli Prime Minister's language to understand that he has no commitment to either a two-state outcome or a one-state two-peoples outcome. Firstly, he refers to Israel as a Jewish state and secondly, he does not acknowledge the existence of the Palestinian people. He regularly refers to them as Arabs, as if the Palestinian people did not exist as a separate cultural group worthy of their own nation.

In the same way that many peoples make up Europe, many peoples make up the Arab world. This language is conveniently ignored by those who provide a great deal of commentary in support of the Israeli government's current offensive. Israel is a sovereign state, having the right to defend itself. The Palestinians are a sovereign people, having the right to resist ongoing attempts to annex their lands. International law is on the side of the Palestinian people.

While I acknowledge that it is very difficult to justify violence to resolve disputes, the West must stop looking the other way and avoid seeing the violence the Palestinian people experience every day. The Palestinian people have both a moral and legal right to live peacefully within their own state and homeland alongside their Arab neighbours and the state of Israel. That is why the Palestinian people commemorate Al Nakba day on 15 May every year, just to remind the world that they do exist and they are not an inconvenient truth.