The Trauma of the Palestinian Displacement - Essay Example

The Trauma of the Palestinian Displacement Introduction The downfall of ancient Palestine and the enormous Palestinian displacement in the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948, also known as al-Nakba, are continuously lamented by Palestinians all over the world. Displacement is still taking place and inflicting terrible trauma, tension and misery to a large number of Palestinians all over the Middle East. The total number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and Palestinian refugees includes the overall population of Palestinians all over the world. Internal displacement remains active in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) (Adalah 2012, 2). A huge number of Palestinians have been relocated against their will due to the expulsion directives, demolitions and construction of the wall. The menace of displacement still lingers. Similar trends of involuntary relocations are taking place in Israel, where development programs for the sole betterment of Jewish populations are relocating native Palestinian populations in areas like Galilee. This essay discusses the pressure, tension, war, discrimination and trauma among Arabs in Israel since the Nakba. Palestine, in 1948, abruptly vanished from the face of the earth. Palestinians slowly, but surely, disappeared from the memories and perceptions of the people across the globe, downgraded into a community of unimportant and weak refugees. The destruction of Palestine represented an episode quite momentous to its people, which severely traumatized them. The disappearance of their homeland embodied their own loss of all the things dear to them: the community, the home and the native soil. This momentous loss was totally ignored by those who, at some point in this chaos, were re-placed into another group that was eventually called ‘Israelis’ (Bokae’e 2003, 14). It is somewhat demoralizing to think that what would turn out to be the Palestinians’ collective trauma was totally disregarded by Israel and, sooner or later, numerous others across the globe. On the whole, the refugees were seriously traumatized by the eviction and the wretched living conditions that they had to bear to rapidly create a scheme for national emancipation. Throughout the initial years following Nakba, Palestinians made the recently emancipated Arabs as an example. Hence, they strengthened their connections with the Arab pro-independence movement by uniting with pan-Arab groups. In addition, the displacement of Palestinians dissolved their customary leadership and its lack of capacity to deter the occurrences ruined its credibility in the minds of Palestinians. The 1967 war worsened this displacement situation. The growth of the Palestinian national movement occurred while several Palestinian groups were being relegated to a minority status in Israel. The displacement of Palestinians continued beyond 1948 and the Israeli officials kept on displacing and relocating the Palestinian population throughout the 1950s. In unison, Israeli soldiers tore down almost all of the vacant Palestinian communities to discourage Palestinians from coming back. It must be emphasized that the IDPs belong to one of the inopportune groups of Palestinian exiles whose official status has not been settled and documented. The Israeli government continuously refuses to recognize the IDPs as a distinct group. At present, the IDPs live in the Palestinian neighborhoods within Israel, in several of which they make up the bulk of the population. Displacement occurrences throughout and after the 1948 conflict provide a clue of the first response of evicted Palestinians to the displacement problem. These occurrences must be viewed as manifestation of social, economic and political circumstances confronting the IDPs. Such occurrences seriously affected the life conditions of displaced Palestinians. The nature and occurrences of displacement, besides the totality of communities and the displaced people’s extended families, led to a communal displacement pattern; in several instances, all the displaced people were relocated collectively from one location to another. In a number of instances, conflict among the residents upset their cohesion and familial concerns, particularly when the community, like some villages in Galilee, was assaulted by Zionist militia more than once before its ultimate invasion and displacement. Every assault was accompanied by the relocation of several families to other more ‘protected’ locations. In most cases, Palestinians, similar to many of the displaced groups across the globe, were uninformed of where their next actual residence would be. The main priority of the refugees, who had abandoned their homelands due to a threat of hostility and war, had been to stay away from the imminent threat. Knowing their next or final residence was not an immediate concern. The Israeli officials were key contributors not just to the evictions, but also to the decision about the relocation of people evicted from the communities. Such Israeli intervention persisted beyond 1948, through numerous efforts to relocate Palestinian residents within or outside the Armistice lines, ostensibly for ‘defense’ and military purposes. The system of relocation was performed to expedite a plan of repopulation of certain locales and seizure of additional Palestinian territories. Carrying out such objectives, the Israeli officials performed, for example, the displacement of Palestinians from their communities, such as Iqrit, after 1948 (Bokae’e 2003, 2). A number of residents were evicted to Syria and Lebanon; several were relocated in neighboring Palestinian communities in Galilee. Simultaneously, the Israeli armed forces pushed the Bedouin of the Negev to leave their customary practices. The displacement of the Palestinians ground them in their distinctiveness and produced the essential factors for the growth of a new form of national vision. Hence, viewed under the perspective of Palestinians, the al-Nakba signified a fundamental symbolic transition, rather than the onset or finale of a period. The identity that had been remarkably definite prior to the al-Nakba was massively traumatized by the destruction of the cities. The demolition of numerous Palestinian cities changed the traditional form of Palestinian identity, which was rooted in their native soil, into a new form of belonging— this relates to the experience of displacement as a uniquely Palestinian reality. The scale of the Palestinian displacement raised al-Nakba as a collective trauma. The events after the almost total annihilation of an area of Palestine and the formation of the refugee situation, facilitated the translation of the 1948 episodes into a national trauma. A number of occurrences were vital in the progression of the trauma. One of the key occurrences was the wholesale refusal of Israelis to acknowledge the rights of the refugees to go back to their homes. The stream of Jewish settlers into Israel, who could acquire immediate citizenship, alongside the organized demolition of depopulated Palestinian communities intended to remove any opportunity for the refugees to come back, changed Palestine unimaginably. Furthermore, a massive portion of the displaced Palestinian population was relocated to refugee camps in bordering nations, which usually restricted their capacity to change places, find a job and settle. Hence, the loss of belongingness imposed on them by their early relocation was simply strengthened in their new context. Unsurprisingly, this loss of belongingness uncovered its collective and political expression in the distinctiveness and spectacle of the experience with Nakba. Hence, the creation of this shared memory constituted an expression of the Palestinian reality and its continued existence as the collective experience required stable political foundation and traditions. The growing Palestinian national movement, from its beginning through its emergence and popularity as a radical campaign and afterward as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), would accomplish this task (Adalah 2012, 3). The strong and natural ties sustained between the refugee population and the national movement on the whole and the refugee sites specifically, created the sought national experience. Nevertheless, the Nakba experience and the symbolic change that came along with it did not essentially impinge on every Palestinian at first in a similar manner. The residents of the West Bank, previously known as East Palestine, who were not displaced did not endure the segregation, discrimination and alienation that the displaced people endured (Bokae’e 2003, 2). The West Bank people possess a strong awareness of the difference between them and the refugees. It was the 1967 invasion and the growing popularity of the PLO that functioned as motivators in the course of conveying the displaced Palestinian identity to their kin in the West Bank and, perhaps eventually, to people within Israel itself. Within such perspective, it could be simply assumed that the development of the Palestinian Authority, or the consolidated identity that was brought about by the Oslo Peace Agreement, represented the final thread in the course of the approval of al-Nakba by people residing in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to the detriment of the exiles living beyond ancient Palestine. The traumatizing displacement of the Palestinians into only one community that was yet again linked to a land rather than surviving the circumstances of the refugee sites, dispossessed the people who endured al-Nakba of their distinctive Palestinian identity, yet again relegating them to the outskirts and subordinate status. In essence, the people who experienced and survived the devastation are currently confronting another tragedy: the gradual fading of their Palestinian distinctiveness, a distinctiveness that grew from their individual and shared displacement and was shaped around their aspirations of going back to the unscathed historic Palestine. Works Cited “Historical Background.” Adalah. n.d. Web. 28 June 2012 . Bokae’e, Nihad. Palestinian Internally Displaced Persons inside Israel: Challenging the Solid Structures. Bethlehem, Palestine: Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, 2003. Print. Read More