As Israel celebrates 60 years of statehood, Palestinians worldwide mourn the loss of their homes and homeland. 

While one people — Jews fleeing persecution in Europe — gained a country, another people — the land’s indigenous Palestinians —lost nearly everything they had. 

In 1948 hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were exiled and replaced by new Jewish immigrants.  This tragedy still shapes the conflict between our two peoples. Palestinians live without freedom and equal rights in the land of their ancestors, or as refugees scattered throughout the world.  Israelis live as occupiers of another people, plagued with a sense of insecurity though they possess one of the world’s strongest militaries. Yet this side of Israel’s establishment and its inescapable connection to current strife will be overlooked in anniversary celebrations.

Some Israelis believe it is possible to reconcile with Palestinians by forgetting this past.  In recent remarks, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asked that upon the establishment of a Palestinian state, “the word ‘Nakba’ (which refers to the expulsion of the Palestinians by Jewish militias in 1948) be deleted from the Arabic lexicon.” 

Imagine asking Americans to excise 9/11 from their collective memory, or Jewish people to forget the Holocaust.  It is precisely the “not forgetting” that allows us to build a more just future.

The Nakba — Arabic for “catastrophe” — is the defining Palestinian experience.  In 1948, Israel’s leaders knew that a predominantly Jewish state could not be established in Palestine peacefully.  Israel’s first president, Moshe Sharett, said “We have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it.”

By the end of 1948, Palestinian society was nearly destroyed.  More than 700,000 Palestinians – two-thirds of the Palestinian population – were forced from their homes or fled in fear.  Jewish forces depopulated more than 450 Palestinian towns and villages, and demolished most of them.  In those that remained, Palestinian property was handed over to new Jewish immigrants. Many Israelis were raised in the homes of Palestinians; their children climbed trees Palestinians had planted, slept in their beds and ate at their kitchen tables.

Today, Palestinian refugees and their descendants number approximately seven million.  Some 2.5 million people in the West Bank have lived under Israeli military occupation for more than 40 years.  For them, the Nakba grinds on, as their land is confiscated for Israel’s ever-expanding Jewish settlements.  Jewish settlers travel freely on modern, well-lit highways built for their use, while Palestinians use separate roads and wait hours at the more than 500 Israeli roadblocks.

Inside Israel itself, nearly 20 percent of citizens are Palestinians – the minority who, along with their descendants, managed to remain despite the Nakba.  They too face discrimination. 

More than 20 Israeli laws privilege Jews over non-Jews.  Israeli law, for example, allows a Jew from anywhere in the world to come to Israel and receive instant citizenship.  But Palestinian refugees still carrying keys to their homes and deeds to their property cannot return.  The right to a home and property — is given to some and denied others based solely on religion.

Roughly equal numbers of Jews and Palestinians inhabit the Holy Land today.  But the two communities do not enjoy equal rights. And despite its nuclear arsenal, Israel cannot hope to remain a colonizer and achieve security for its people.  If we are ever to live peacefully and securely, Israel must do two things: acknowledge the injustice done to the Palestinian people, and grant Palestinians their rights. 

International law recognizes that all refugees, including Palestinian refugees, have the right to return to their lost homes or to be compensated for choosing to settle elsewhere.  Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza deserve freedom.  Palestinians within Israel must enjoy full equality with Jewish citizens. 

Current U.S. policy — which gives unquestioned financial and diplomatic support to Israel, even as it expands settlements and pursues other policies that contradict American values — will not bring peace and security to the region.  American policymakers can help to usher in a more peaceful world for us all by supporting instead the efforts of those Palestinians and Israelis who are committed to working together in support of a solution based on justice and equality for everyone, regardless of race or religion.  g

Eitan Bronstein is the director of Zochrot (Hebrew for “remembering”) , an Israeli organization which seeks to engage Jewish Israelis in remembering and talking about the Nakba.

 Muhammad Jaradat is co-founder of Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights. Badil (Arabic for “alternative”), strives to increase refugee involvement in securing a just resolution to the refugee crisis.