Abstract
This article examines closely the role of the 1948 Palestinian catastrophe in the contemporary peace process. It argues that peace mediation in the conflict regarded history in general an obstacle for progress and the Palestinian victimization in 1948 as a marginal and irrelevant issue. This peace process, which ignored the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and its impact on the contemporary reality, failed dismally. The article argues that only a courageous encounter with the crime committed in 1948 and an authentic search for rectifying it through restitutive justice, and not retribution, can open up a genuine process of reconciliation in Palestine.
Highlights
This article examines closely the role of the 1948 Palestinian catastrophe in the contemporary peace process
This view is entrenched in a wider context of reconciliation and mediation policies that emerged in the United States after the Second World War
Noam Chomsky, noting such a tendency in the Middle East peace process, concludes that the result was a never-ending “peace process” which was not meant to bring peace, but rather provides jobs and preoccupations for a large group of people belonging to the peace industry.[2]
Summary
In the first two years after the Nakba, there was enough energy left in the United Nations (UN) to produce a diplomatic effort to bring peace to the country. In the eyes of the Palestine Conciliation Commission, the UN mediation body that drafted Resolution 194, the unconditional return of the refugees was the basis for peace in Palestine This was one of three major features of the proposed solution for post-Mandatory Palestine; the other two were a more or less equal division of the country and the internationalization of Jerusalem. The peace proposal disadvantaged the Palestinians in a similar way to the November 1947 partition plan It ignored the colonialist nature of Zionism—a settler colonialist project—and more importantly, it failed to consider the loss of Palestine as a homeland and civilization. The Arab leaders adopted a brinksmanship policy—which enabled Israel to attack and annex the rest of Palestine: this policy did not save the Palestinians and did not improve the Arab world’s relationship with the West Against this background, the peace process in Palestine began to emerge
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