Introduction
“There is no denying that the Zionist colonization of Palestine which began in the early 1880s and continues to this day, represents one of the most remarkable colonizing ventures of all time”.
Dr Walid Khalidi - All That Remains
“I want to explore both the mechanism of the 1948 ethnic cleansing [of Palestine] and the cognitive system that allowed the world to forget...I want to make the case for the paradigm of ethnic cleansing and use it to replace the paradigm of war as the basis for the scholarly research of, and the public debate about, 1948”.
Professor Ilan Pappe - The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
“The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is as much America's crusade as Israel's. On 16 August [2007], the Bush administration announced an unprecedented $30bn military "aid package" for Israel, the world's fourth biggest military power, an air power greater than Britain, a nuclear power greater than France. No other country on earth enjoys such immunity, allowing it to act without sanction, as Israel. No other country has such a record of lawlessness: not one of the world's tyrannies comes close. International treaties, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ratified by Iran, are ignored by Israel. There is nothing like it in UN history”.
John Pilger, August 2007
“In 1948 eighty-five percent of Palestinians in the part of Palestine that became Israel were displaced, 675 towns and villages were depopulated while their lands and properties were confiscated. Palestinians refer to this experience as their Nakba”.
Dr Salman Abu-Sitta - The Return Journey
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Throughout the pages of this website, 1948:LEST WE FORGET aim to expose the lies which have, for far too long, been presented as the true scenario of how Israel came to be in 1948.
There is nothing mysterious about what is often referred to as ‘the Palestine problem’. What Palestinians refer to as their Nakba was not enacted in some obscure era of history but rather in the 20th Century, within our life time and under the eyes of Western politicians and administrators. It was broadcast through sophisticated means of modern communication and was carefully documented and archived in the inner sanctum of many institutions and think-tanks.
But, until recently, information about ‘the Palestine problem’ has been hidden from public scrutiny and officially classified by governmental agencies.
Apart from the declaration in 1897 by the Zionists at Basel to create a Jewish home in Palestine, the real decisions which helped bring about the Palestinian tragedy were in fact taken in two Western capitals: London and Washington. These decisions were backed by a strategy of propaganda and manipulation to realise the Zionist vision of 'a Jewish home in Palestine’. All the crises that have beset the Middle East from the early days of the Palestine rebellions of the 1930’s until the modern wars between Israel and the Arabs flow directly and indirectly from that Basel decision of 1897. There have been persistent, determined and concerted Zionist efforts to implement, consolidate and even expand the Zionist ‘vision’. All else is derivative from this policy. This process continues to the present day and will continue in the future until that ‘vision’ is fully realised. About that, there is no doubt.
As the process of turning that ‘vision’ into reality continues, Western acquiescence to, and accommodation of that ‘vision’ also continues. Its manifestation lies at the heart of what might be termed as the Bible Syndrome. Its epicentre is the great dialogue between Christianity and Judaism. This epicentre is vast, powerful and is proving to be the final doomsday chapter of what is left of Palestine.
No conflict in the world is as well documented, mapped or recorded as the Palestine tragedy. There is a mass of detailed maps, photographs, populations counts, up-to-date reports, graphs and official resolutions which document this crisis in all its details and which show that the physical, human and economic basis of an independent and viable Palestinian state has long disappeared. The two-state solution is now an empty phrase. There is a huge gap between what is being said and what we hear, between what is being done on the ground and what is officially reported or admitted. The construction of Israeli tunnels, bridges, settlements, exclusion zones and bypass roads for Jews only continues unabated on confiscated Palestinian land despite world condemnation. The construction of the illegal prison Wall continues to rob Palestinians of their land and of their farms. The establishment of new illegal settlements and the enlargement of existing illegal ones are a daily activity in defiance of international law. Nobody makes a formal complaint and when they do, no one listens.
For this reason 1948: LEST WE FORGET, convinced that the aims of the Basel Conference have been the basis for Israeli policies in all of Palestine, aims to show that the problems did not start with the establishment of the Israeli state in May 1948 (for that is the event that caused the Palestinian Nakba), but with the decisions taken by the Zionist leadership in Basel in 1897: to create an exclusive home and a nation for the Jews in Palestine within 50 years. With this declaration, the Zionists plotted to take over the nation of one people and offer it to the people of many nations.
For a chronology of key events in the history of Palestine up to The Nakba, please log on to:
http://www.alnakba.org/chronology/chronology.htm
Yanun - Palestine Palestinian family 1943
1 year after the Nakba: 1949 60 years later: 2009
At the time of that Basel Conference of 1897, 95% of the population of Palestine were Palestinian Arabs and 99% of its land was Arab owned. This fact was excluded from the thinking of the Zionist leadership at the time and was memorably reflected in Golda Meir’s famous statement: “There was no such thing as a Palestinian people…it was not as though there was a Palestinian people considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist”.
Israel did not exist before May 1948. That so-called state has neither recognised boundaries nor a national constitution.