The Nakba, or "day of catastrophe," remains the central issue of struggle for the Palestinian people. Commemorated each May 15th, the Nakba began in May 1948 when the State of Israel was founded on Palestinian lands, leading to the forcible expulsion of 75% of the indigenous population. Today, over 5 million Palestinian refugees remain in refugee camps in countries around the world, unable to return to their land and homes. They are the oldest and largest refugee population in the world.
With the announcement, just one day before the Nakba, that Israel has settled with hundreds of Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike, we reflect on 64 years of Israeli occupation—and Palestinian resistance—with a survey of Verso's responses to this struggle.
Gideon Levy writes in Ha'aretz on the role of Israeli dissidents and his recent appearance at Jewish Book Week 2011:
About two weeks ago, I was invited to the Jewish Book Week in London, following the publication in English of my book "The Punishment of Gaza." The Jewish establishment in Britain threatened to boycott the event, the organizers considered hiring security guards, and roughly 500 people, mainly middle-of-the-road Jews, filled the hall, asked questions and mainly, in their modest way, expressed great sympathy. I spoke, as I always do, against the occupation, the injustices and the damage it does to Israel and to the Palestinians, against the attacks on Israeli democracy as I have written in the hundreds of articles that have been published in Haaretz in Hebrew and in English, and as I did at the London School of Economics and Trinity University in Dublin.
As on previous occasions, a "spy" from the Israeli Embassy was sent to Trinity - this one, an Israeli student who was asked to write down what I said and convey it to the embassy. The embassy quickly dispatched a report to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, and the Foreign Ministry quickly leaked it to a well-known newspaper, which published only my harshest statements, without context - and there you have it: the indictment of a dissident.
Visit Ha'aretz to read the full article. The Yedioth Ahronoth article on Gideon Levy's talks can be read here. When Gideon Levy visited London last year, the Israeli Embassy emailed British Jews telling them about the event then, when they were criticised in the Jerusalem Post, said it was to inform "Jewish activists...about an anti-Israel event".
Arab News has reviewed Gideon Levy's acclaimed book The Punishment of Gaza calling it "a heartbreaking story of the daily sufferings of an oppressed people and of the world's indifference to their plight"
Al Jazeera and the Guardian and Al Quds (Arabic) newspapers yesterday released over 1600 confidential documents laying open the last decade of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. The papers go well beyond refuting the threadbare myth that the Israelis have had no 'partner for peace', and show rather how weak and incompetent officials betrayed Palestinians by offering to surrender "virtually everything except their salaries", as Tariq Ali puts it on the London Review of Books blog. As Ali notes, it is well worth revisiting Edward Said's prophetic 1994 article for the LRB in which he described the Oslo accords as a "Palestinian Versailles" in the light of these revelations.