Palestinian Journalist: Arab States Caused the Nakba

A remarkable article by a Gazan journalist has just appeared at the Hamas website palinfo.com. It makes the case that the Arab states were responsible for the Nakba, because they persuaded so many Arabs to leave what was about to become a battlefield. This, of course, is what Israel and its supporters have argued all along – that the Arabs in “Palestine” left because Arabs outside told them to do so.

The report, at MEMRI.org, is here: “Hamas-Affiliated Gazan Journalist In Article On Occasion Of Nakba Day: Palestine Was Lost Because Palestinians Heeded Advice Of Arab Regimes To Leave Their Homes,” MEMRI, May 18, 2022:

Here is the summary of the article:

On Nakba Day this year (May 15, 2022), Ibrahim Al-Madhoun, a Gazan journalist affiliated with Hamas, published an article on the Hamas website palinfo.com discussing the reasons for the Nakba and for the situation of the Palestinians today. Titled “The Nakba from a Different Perspective,” the article claims that the Palestinians left their homes and villages in 1948 in compliance with the advice of the Arab armies, who promised to fight on their behalf but failed to deliver on this promise. This, he says, is what caused the Palestinians to lose their homeland. He adds that, today, the Arab regimes are pressuring the Palestinians to surrender to Israel, but they have learned their lesson and are ignoring this advice and defending themselves by manufacturing rockets and building tunnels. Al-Madhoun concludes that, 74 years after the Nakba, the Palestinians are on the verge of regaining all of Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

And here is the full article:

We are now marking 74 years since the loss of Palestine and the dispersal of its people across the world in what is known as the Nakba [literally, the catastrophe]. This [is how we refer to it] because of the torments and the [harsh] consequences that have been suffered by every Palestinian for decades, which we could not have imagined would ensue. The Palestinian people is a living people that adheres to its identity and its land, is rebellious by nature, makes sacrifices and is capable of defending its land. However, the loss of Palestine for all this time raises many questions and queries.

When our parents left their lands, their cities and their homes [in 1948] they left their money, belongings, clothing and jewelry behind, and took with them only the deeds to their homes and their keys, because [they thought] they were leaving only temporarily. Had they realized it would last [longer, even] for a single year, they would have preferred to die in their homes, their orchards and their fields.

In late 1947, the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, warned the Jews that if war broke out in Palestine, it “would be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades.” That was when the Arab exodus started, and it continued well into 1949, when the war ended. Many other Arab leaders insisted that the Arabs should leave “Palestine” so as not to become victims of the violence. The war would soon be won, and they could then return in triumph. “We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in,” said Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri as-Said. And he added: “the Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.” The Jordanian newspaper Filastin admitted the same after the ceasefire that ended the war: “The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies.”

The Arabs did not simply flee in great haste, leaving all behind, as Al-Madhoun claims. Most of them took their “money, belongings, clothing, and jewelry” with them.

Sadly, the armies of several Arab regimes had a hand in persuading the people and the villages to leave and to abandon their homes, on the pretext of protecting [the villages] and fighting the Zionist gangs. The Palestinians believed and trusted them and the families left, hoping that the Zionist gangs would be defeated and their strength would be broken…

Palestinians sold their wives’ jewelry to buy a single rifle to defend their village, but the Arab armies collected their weapons and promised them they would fight on their behalf. They took the weapons and sent the [Palestinian] fighters away, and then they withdrew without putting up a fight.

This notion that the Arab armies went around confiscating the weapons of the Palestinian Arabs is pure fantasy, part of Al-Madhoun’s narrative of wicked outside Arabs urging the trusting Palestinians to leave, and disarming those brave Palestinians who were eager to fight. Al-Madhoun implies that had they been allowed to fight, and given the weapons they needed, the Palestinians would have defeated the Zionist “gangs” on their own, but they were not given that chance.

Al-Madhoun also claims that the Arab armies “withdrew without putting up a fight.” This is nonsense. They put up a fight, for more than a year of fighting, and 4,000 Israeli soldiers and 2,400 civilians were killed. About 7,000 foreign Arab fighters were also killed, and more than 5,000 Palestinian Arab fighters. Al-Madhoun’s anger at the other, non-Palestinian, Arabs leaves him unhinged; he dismisses their effort entirely. Perhaps, from his point of view, it is better to claim that they “withdrew without putting up a fight” and “simply handed over the country to the Jews” than to admit that they did fight, but were defeated in battle by the tenacious Jews.

Had the Arab leaders only supported the Palestinian fighters with weapons and funds, or refrained from interfering and let them to do as they chose, Palestine would not have been lost. But they did not do that. [Instead] they interfered, planned, came together — and then simply handed over the country [to the Jews].

According to Al-Madhoun, the Arab leaders not only refused to provide weapons and money to the Palestinian fighters in 1948, but took away what few weapons they had. Until now, no one, Arab or Jew, has ever charged the foreign Arabs with seizing the weapons of the Palestinian Arabs. Nor has anyone previously maintained that the invading Arabs did not fight but “simply handed over the country to the Jews.” What his article shows is the depth of the current anger among many Palestinians at the other Arabs, whom they correctly sense are no longer much interested in them, and quite a few are prepared to strengthen ties with Israel. Those Arab states that have joined the Abraham Accords have chosen to further their national interest through deals with the Jewish state. The UAE, which was the first Arab state to join the Accords, has already made almost $1 billion worth of such deals with Israel, involving trade, tourism, high tech, and agriculture. And though they have not joined the Accords, both Egypt, the most populous Arab state, and Saudi Arabia, the richest Arab state, have ever closer security ties with Israel. Both these developments – the Abraham Accords and Arab security ties with the Jewish state, enrage the Palestinians.

Today the ball and idea are back in the same court and the Arab regimes are playing the same role of colluding with the occupation. These regimes are besieging our people, fighting it and treating to it with hostility, and pressuring it to surrender its weapons and surrender to “Israel.” The Arab regimes condemn our Palestinian people in Gaza for possessing weapons and insisting on manufacturing rockets and building tunnels. They [are trying to] convince it to hand over all of this, but today our people are [more] aware and experienced, and thus the Nakba will not recur as long as our people is armed and as long as the jihad fighters build their tunnels.

The Arab regimes are not “colluding” with the occupation. They are not “besieging our [Palestinian] people, fighting it and treating it with hostility.” Nor are they “pressuring [our people] to surrender [their] weapons.” None of this is true. What is true is that the “Arab regimes” have lost their former interest in the Cause of Palestine. They have other things to worry about: for some it is their collapsing economies (Lebanon), for others civil war (in Libya, Syria, Yemen); for still others the Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt, Jordan), and for almost all of them, but especially for the Gulf Arabs, there is the looming threat of Iran. Many of the Arabs are exasperated by the Palestinians, who refuse even to negotiate with Israel. As the Saudi Crown Prince told Mahmoud Abbas, in 2018, “Just accept whatever deal the Americans offer you.”

Today, 74 years after the Nakba and one year after the Sword of Jerusalem Campaign in Gaza [i.e. the May 2021 Hamas-Israel military conflict], and after the heroic operations carried out by individuals and by organizations in the West Bank, the ribat[mobilization on the frontlines] of the residents of Jerusalem at Al-Aqsa Mosque, the fidelity of the ’48 Palestinians [i.e. the Israeli Arabs] to their national identity, the struggles of the Palestinians outside Palestine, their longing to return and their direct participation [in the struggle] – we are closer to victory and liberation. We are on the verge of the return that we discern from afar, and here we come.”

The war in Gaza in May 2021 ended in a crushing defeat for Hamas. More than 200 of its fighters were killed, as against a single Israeli soldier. 4,500 of its rockets were used up; 600 of them fell short, in Gaza itself, some of them wounding and killing Palestinians. As for the rest of those missiles, 90% were intercepted and blown up by the Iron Dome anti-missile system, and the remainder fell harmlessly on fields in Israel. Israel destroyed several of Hamas’ command-and-control centers, and much of its network of terror tunnels. The IAF (Israeli Air Force) located and pulverized Hamas’ stockpiles of weapons, including rockets and missiles that had been hidden near or in schools, hospitals, apartment buildings. Al-Madhoun thinks that war was a great victory for Hamas. No one of sense agrees.

He speaks of the “ribat” or mobilization, of the Arabs on the Temple Mount during Ramadan. That “mobilization” was hardly that; these were really just large numbers of rioting and directionless Arabs, hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails at Jews worshipping at the Western Wall far below, and at the Israeli police. It took a few days for those police to subdue the rioters, but they finally did. Hundreds of rioters were arrested. That put paid to the “mobilization” that Al-Madhoun praises. The Israeli police also entered Al-Aqsa Mosque and seized rocks and other weapons that had been stockpiled inside, demonstrating to the Palestinians that no part of the Compound was off-limits to their operations. Al-Madhoun speaks of the fidelity to the cause of Palestine of the “’48 Palestinians” – that is, the Israeli Arabs. But Arab opinion polls tell a different story. The great majority of Israeli Arabs want to remain citizens of Israel, and regard with horror the possibility that they might be ruled by the Palestinian Authority.

In February 2004, an Arab research center found that Arab respondents preferred by a 10-to-1 ratio to remain Israeli citizens. Two polls in December 2007 agreed on a 4.5-to-1 ratio. A June 2008 poll found that Israeli Arabs preferred Israel to “any other country in the world” by a 3.5-to-1 ratio. A June 2012 poll found a similar ratio to this same question. A January 2015 poll found Israeli Arabs expressing pride in being Israeli by a 2-to-1 ratio. Most recently, last year ninety-three percent of the Arabs in East Jerusalem, said that they preferred to live under Israeli rule than under the Palestinian Authority.

Israel goes from strength to strength. Every week brings news of some Israeli startup that after an IPO becomes a “unicorn” (a company with a value of at least one billion dollars). Israel has become a world leader in solar energy and water management. Israel’s advanced weaponry – its drones, its Iron Dome and Iron Beam anti-missile systems, its cyberweapons – are now being bought even by the U.S. Defense Department. In 2021 Israel sold nearly $20 billion worth of its weapons. Meanwhile, the Palestinians grow ever weaker. Both Hamas in Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, are riddled with corruption, nepotism, and gross mismanagement. The Gulf Arabs have stopped sending aid. So have the members of the EU, and have said they will continue to withhold it, until the PA excises, as it has so often promised to do in the past, the violent antisemitism in its schoolbooks. Two Hamas leaders, Khaled Meshaal and Mousa Abu Marzouk, have each managed to amass fortunes of at least $2.5 billion. Mahmoud Abbas, no slouch either at grand theft, has accumulated, together with his sons Tarek and Yasser, $400 million. The Palestinians, so many of whom are impoverished, are helpless to prevent this grand theft of government money, or to change their rulers. Those who protest are arrested, imprisoned, or worse. Nizar Banat, the most acute critic of Abbas on social media, was beaten to death in 2021 by his goons. Other dissidents in Gaza and the PA-run territories either shut up or flee, some abroad, and some to Israel, where they know they will be safe among the “hated Zionists.” 

Al-Madhoun remains oblivious to reality. He sees a Rosy Tomorrow for the wretched Palestinians, who are time after time defeated by Israel’s military, who are ever more impoverished by their grasping and despotic leaders, and who have been largely abandoned by the other Arabs who no longer care as once they did about what happens to them. For Al-Madhoun, “we are closer to victory and liberation. We are on the verge of the return that we discern from afar, and here we come.”

“Here we come.” Just as they did, those Arabs, including those we are supposed to call “Palestinians,” in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, in 1980, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2014, 2021, enduring defeat after defeat after defeat, from the wicked Zionists who cannot afford to lose because, as Golda Meir used to explain, “we have a secret weapon in our battle against the Arabs. We have no place else to go.”