Our children still envision a free Palestine

Dr Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid, Ambassador of the State of Palestine to Ireland, marks the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, explaining how the Palestinian people’s “struggle for freedom and self-determination will continue” and that “our children and our grandchildren will never give up on our right of return”.

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The year 2023 marks 75 years since the ethnic cleansing and mass displacement of Palestinians, known as the Nakba. Seventy five years since their civil and national rights were overwritten, since peoples’ livelihoods and properties were destroyed, since innocent lives were stolen, since families were separated and land was partitioned and taken.

What is a Nakba? It is the Arabic word for catastrophe. Nakba reflects the mass expulsion and forcible displacement of the Palestinians from historic Palestine by Zionist militias, creating the Palestinian refugee problem which is ongoing to this current day.

Before the Nakba, Palestine was under the British Mandate. In 1916, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was laid out by the French and British powers, dividing the former territories of the Ottoman Empire between them. Britain received Jordan, Iraq, and Palestine. This agreement was, and still is, a large part of the cause of the problems across the Arab world, as it was set in place with only Western colonial interests in mind.

In 1917, during the first World War, the Balfour Declaration was put in place, empowering Britain to call for a Jewish home in Palestine, giving a large boost to the Zionist movement. This led to the migration of the Jewish people from Europe in the 1920s and 30s. In 1922, the British Mandate for Palestine was approved by the League of Nations Council, without the consent of the Palestinians. This is one of the many examples of how the voice of the Palestinian people was taken from them as it is in the present day.

During the Mandate, from 1922 to 1947, large-scale Jewish immigration, mainly from Eastern Europe, took place, the numbers swelling in the 1930s during the Nazi regime. Arab demands for independence and resistance to immigration led to a rebellion in 1936. 

• Dr Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid, Ambassador of the State of Palestine to Ireland

In 1947, following the turmoil of the Second World War, Britain handed over responsibility for Palestine to the UN and terminated its mandate to Palestine. The UN General Assembly set up a Special Committee on Palestine, which decided that the partition of Palestine was necessary. Resolution 181 was put in place, calling for 56.47% of Palestine to be allocated to a Jewish state, 42.88% to the Arabs, whilst Jerusalem and Bethlehem were placed on a corpus separatum, administered by the UN directly. Outrage followed; a Jewish state had been allocated the majority of the land, despite Jews accounting for no more than one third of the population, whose immigration to Palestine was hugely facilitated through the British Mandate. The Jewish state, now known as Israel, was declared on 14 May 1948. What followed was the most traumatic catastrophe that has ever befallen the Palestinians.

On the 15 May 1948, a war involving the neighbouring Arab countries broke out. This led Israel to occupying 78% of historical Palestine, illegally expanding beyond the borders outlined by the UN’s Resolution 181. Some 800,000 Palestinians were forcibly exiled after 531 Palestinian villages were destroyed and erased from the map, leaving the Palestinian people with no choice but to flee. Zionist gangs perpetrated 70 bloody massacres against the Palestinians, such as the massacres in the villages of Deir Yassin, Tantoura, and Dawayma. 

The war of 1948 was a result of the Jewish forces, which were significantly larger and much more well-armed than any Arab troops, taking over half of the Arab state. The Palestinians who were not able to escape outside of the Israeli borders remained inside and were granted a second-class Israeli citizenship. 

They were not, and are still not, treated like Jewish Israeli citizens. They were placed under military rule until 1966, had up to 70% of their land seized, and required permits to leave their villages. Around two thirds of the Palestinian refugees remained in historic Palestine, in areas still under Arab rule like the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The rest of the Palestinians fled to neighbouring Arab countries, like Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.

• Nakba was the mass expulsion and forcible displacement of the Palestinians from historic Palestine by Zionist militias in 1948

Now, 75 years later, we are still experiencing the violations and oppression by the occupation on a daily basis. The Palestinians who were forcibly exiled following the Nakba spent decades of their civil and national rights being ignored, violated, and trampled on. Their lives and livelihoods sacrificed, their land stolen, and their properties destroyed. The Palestinians endured oppression, home demolition and displacement, imprisonment and torture, while witnessing countless attempts to partition their homeland, divide their people, destroy their lives, and colonize their land. Seventy five years later, our narrative must and will prevail.

Despite the sacrifice and the suffering, we do not seek pity. What we seek is support, resistance to apartheid, and for our voices to be heard. We continue to tell our stories so our history is not forgotten. With family members older than the State of Israel, we hear accounts of grandparents who still hold the key to the home that they were displaced from, a home which was likely destroyed, with their land stolen and a new home built and lived in by illegal settlers. We hear stories of our parents travelling from city to city by foot, losing family members on the journey.

And yet, our suffering has not once silenced us. We use our cause to inspire art, music, poetry, food, and documentaries. Our aim to educate our children to the highest standard has not once been dampened. Our children are ambassadors, engineers, doctors, and lawyers, each defending and protecting the Palestinian name in their own way. Thousands of martyrs sacrificed for defending their nation, defending their UN mandated right to freedom, all of whom would do it again if they had the choice.

So how do we commemorate the Nakba? We continue telling our stories. We continue to fight for our freedom. We continue to call upon lawmakers and representatives of the free nations to support our struggle for freedom. 

We come together to rise to the challenges that our cause faces, to stand up for our land and our holy places, and to focus on confronting the illegal occupation and getting rid of the apartheid the Palestinians face. Seventy five years on, the Palestinians’ resilience has never been dampened, and it will continue strong until Palestine is free, with Jerusalem as its capital, with the Palestinian flag flying high.

I recall our late President Yasser Arafat saying at the UNGA in 1974, “I come to you bearing an olive branch in one hand and a freedom fighter gun in the other. Do NOT let the olive branch fall from my hand.”

Our right of return is due. My grandparents thought it would only last a week – it has now been 75 years. They are gone, but us, our parents, and our children and our grandchildren will never give up on our right of return. Our struggle for freedom and self-determination will continue so we can achieve our free State of Palestine, with the 1967 borders and East Jerusalem as its eternal capital.