Ask Israeli leaders why soldiers attacked the occupied West Bank city of Jenin this week and they’ll tell you it harbors terrorists. Ask Palestinians, and many will say something radically different: It’s another Nakba.
To American ears, the first answer makes sense. After all, the U.S. launched an entire “war on terror.” The second is almost incomprehensible. In American political discourse, the word “Nakba”— which denotes the expulsion of roughly 750,000 Palestinians during Israel’s war of independence in the late 1940s — is largely taboo. This spring, when Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., tried to hold an event at the Capitol Visitor Center commemorating the Nakba, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., accused her of employing “antisemitic tropes” and blocked her from using the room.
Palestinians in Jenin know the Nakba is not an antisemitic myth. For many, it’s the reason their families ended up in the city in the first place.
But Palestinians in Jenin know the Nakba is not an antisemitic myth. For many, it’s the reason their families ended up in the city in the first place. In the early months of 1948, Zionist forces expelled tens of thousands of Palestinians from Haifa and its surrounding villages. In his book, “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited,” Israeli historian Benny Morris cites a Zionist official commenting in April that “all the villages in the area as far as the eye can see [have] been evacuated.” Many survivors trudged the roughly 60 kilometers (over 37 miles) southeast to Jenin.
Few Americans learn this history. Few Jewish Israelis do either — in 2009, the Israeli government banned the term Nakba from school textbooks. So the suggestion that something like that could happen again sounds preposterous. But there’s a reason Jenin's mayor said this week that Israel’s invasion of his city “reminds us of the days of Nakba.” It’s not only that the attack forced thousands of Palestinians to flee. It’s that Israel’s current government is filled with ministers who talk openly about continuing the work that began in 1948 and expelling large numbers of Palestinians again.
As I detailed in a recent essay in Jewish Currents, the litany begins with Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, who oversees civilian administration in the West Bank. In 2017, he penned a manifesto arguing that Israel should give Palestinians in the West Bank a choice: either accept their status as permanent noncitizens under military rule or “receive aid to emigrate.” Smotrich’s views are no secret. Earlier this year, former Defense Minister Benny Gantz observed that “Smotrich wants to cause another Palestinian Nakba.”
He’s not alone. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has suggested creating a new ministry to “promote immigration” among Palestinians “who want to eliminate the Jewish state.” Avi Dichter, Israel’s minister of agriculture and rural development, warned Palestinians in 2007 that “whoever cries of the Nakba year after year, shouldn’t be surprised if they actually have a Nakba eventually.” Tzachi Hanegbi, Israel’s national security adviser, told Palestinians in the aftermath of the killing of three Israelis in 2017, “This is how a ‘Nakba’ begins.” Last year, Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, reminded Palestinians of their “mass flight” in 1948 and told them not to make the same “mistake” again.
It would be comforting to think these politicians’ views enjoy little public support. But that is just not true.
It would be comforting to think these politicians’ views enjoy little public support. But that is just not true. Depending on how you phrase the question, one-third to one-half of Jewish Israelis endorse some form of population transfer. And in small-scale ways, Israel encourages Palestinians to leave already. In the large and fully Israeli-controlled West Bank territory known as Area C, Israel regularly demolishes Palestinian homes, usually because Palestinians lack building permits, which as noncitizens under military rule they can’t get. In east Jerusalem, Israel revokes the residency rights of Palestinians who leave the city for an extended period of time as part of a policy that the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem says is “geared toward pressuring Palestinians to leave.”
Could this trickle of expulsions turn into a deluge? There’s no way to know. But Israel’s largest-scale expulsions — in 1948 and again in 1967, when it deported hundreds of thousands more Palestinians — both took place during armed conflict. And as this week’s attack on Jenin shows, sustained armed conflict looks more likely today than it has in decades. This spring, Michael Barnett, a George Washington University political scientist, reviewed the United Nations’ criteria for predicting mass atrocities and noted that “Israel ticks all the boxes.”
Israel claims all of its soldiers have now withdrawn from Jenin. But this pause in open warfare is merely that — a pause. Ultimately, preventing another Nakba requires telling Israeli leaders that another effort at mass expulsion would bring a dramatic U.S. response: a halt to arms sales, condemnation at the United Nations, support for prosecutions at the International Criminal Court. It requires telling Israel that America’s support is not, as President Joe Biden continues to insist, “unbreakable.” Mass ethnic cleansing would break it.
More fundamentally, preventing another Nakba requires believing Palestinians when they tell pollsters they fear one is on the way. People with family histories of deep oppression often develop a sixth sense about impending danger. It’s why Black Americans were more prone to believe the U.S. could elect Donald Trump.
Believing Palestinians starts with learning their history. Every time an American politician denies that the Nakba happened in 1948, they make it more likely it will reoccur today.