George Bisharat is a law professor at the University
of California's Hastings College of Law in San
Francisco. This article first appeared in The
Sacromento Bee on 30 November 2003. Reprinted with
permission.

Origins of the Middle East crisis: Who caused the
Palestinian Diaspora?
George Bisharat, The Electronic Intifada, 3 December
2003

In early October, I meandered the shores of Lake
Geneva, Switzerland with easy-laughing Mahmoud. We
were bleary-eyed from international travel, and from
many hours of animated discussions at our conference.

Scholars, lawyers and activists had converged to
explore ways to implement the rights of Palestinians
to return to and regain their homes, seized by Israel
in 1948. This fate had befallen Villa Harun ar-Rashid,
the Jerusalem home of my late grandfather, Hanna
Ibrahim Bisharat. We had been inspired by accounts of
successful campaigns for housing restitution for
refugees and other dispossessed peoples in Bosnia,
South Africa and Rwanda.

The sky was leaden, the wind off the slate lake
bracing. But the fountain at the end of the lake
lofted exuberant white plumes of water toward the
heavens, and seemed to elevate with them our hopes and
dreams for a more just and peaceful future.

Little did we suspect that in other conference rooms
across the same city, Israelis and Palestinians had
been conducting covert, informal negotiations for two
years toward what are now touted as the "Geneva
Accord." The agreement, while envisioning a
Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,
studiously avoids mention of the very rights Mahmoud
and I, and many others, are fighting to protect. The
negotiators, prominent private citizens, include
former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and
former Palestinian Information and Culture Minister
Yasser Abed Rabbo.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has vehemently
attacked the unofficial pact, and the negotiators have
been condemned as irresponsible meddlers. The accord
has no chance of adoption in the immediate future.

Its principal objective may have only been didactic:
to teach Israelis there is an alternative to the
militaristic policies of Sharon.

The pointed silence regarding the Palestinian right of
return, however, means that an important opportunity
has been missed to apprise Israelis, and the world, of
a critical reality. No real or lasting peace will be
achieved in the area until Israel finally admits the
long-denied truth, accepts moral responsibility and
apologizes for its forcible exile of Palestinian
refugees 55 years ago.

In 1948, three quarters of a million Palestinians were
driven from what became Israel, their homes, land and
possessions taken over by the new Jewish state. Most
were victims of direct military attacks, forcible
expulsion orders or a deliberate campaign of terror
and intimidation, fueled by actual massacres. A
post-war internal report from the Haganah (a
quasi-official Jewish militia) stated that of 391,000
Palestinians who had fled by June, 1948, some 73
percent had done so in response to Jewish military
operations.

Palestinian villagers were often attacked at night,
from two or three sides, while a road to the closest
Arab country was left open. Their flight was hastened
by news of massacres committed by Zionist forces, the
most infamous of which occurred on April 9, 1948 in
Deir Yassin. Up to 254 mostly unarmed Palestinians
were slaughtered. Some were paraded in Jerusalem on
trucks before being executed.

Describing the July 10, 1948 attack on Kweikat, near
Haifa, a villager attested: "We were awakened by the
loudest noise we had ever heard, shells exploding and
artillery fire ... the whole village was in panic ...
Most of the villagers began to flee with their pajamas
on. The wife of Qasim Ahmad Said fled [mistakenly]
carrying a pillow in her arms instead of her child."

Exile involved more than material deprivation.
Palestinians lost their homes, belongings, fields,
orchards, workshops, possessions, professions -- but
more than that they lost their human dignity. Any
people that has suffered massive wrongs --
African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Jews --
understand the special wound of victimization for who
you are, not what you have done.

Like slavery for African-Americans, internment for
Japanese-Americans and the Nazi holocaust for Jews,
the "Nakba" ("Catastrophe") was a seminal event in the
consciousness of the Palestinian people. No act of the
Palestinians justified their expulsion. Their only
"crime" was that they were born Christians and Muslims
in a place coveted by the Zionist movement for an
exclusive Jewish state, and refused to slink off into
history as a vanquished people.

As Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion,
once candidly admitted to a colleague: "If I were an
Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That
is natural: We have taken their country. Sure, God
promised it to us, but what does that matter to them?
Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true,
but 2,000 years ago, and what is that to them? There
has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz,
but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We
have come here and stolen their country." (The comment
was made to Nahum Goldmann, as reported in the
latter's book, "The Jewish Paradox.")

The U.N. quickly affirmed the right of the
Palestinians to choose to return to their homes, or to
receive compensation and support for resettlement.
Israel stone-walled the entire international
community, rejecting virtually any return by the
refugees of 1948, a position the U.S. delegate to the
U.N. Conciliation Committee on Palestine denounced as
"morally reprehensible."

An official Israeli Transfer Committee under Yosef
Weitz mobilized to block the return of Palestinian
refugees, orchestrating the obliteration of entire
Palestinian villages, or their resettlement with
Jewish immigrants.

The Transfer Committee also devised a propaganda plan
to justify Israel's rejection of the right of return.
Israel soon claimed that Palestinians left their homes
after radio broadcasts by Arab leaders bidding them to
evacuate. Later review of broadcast transcripts proved
this claim to be a fabrication. Israel argued that
Jewish emigration from Arab countries, some of which
flowed to Israel, constituted a "population exchange"
that compensated for its expulsion of the Palestinians
-- as if two wrongs made a right.

Israel also blamed Arab states for "failing to
resettle Palestinian refugees" -- something the
Palestinians themselves actively resisted. Five and a
half decades later, Palestinian refugees and their
offspring number 5.5 million people.

Israel's denial of responsibility for the refugees,
and rejection of their repatriation -- unchallenged by
the new "Geneva Accord" -- is, at this stage, as
galling and hurtful as the original expulsion itself.
The pain of denial should be intuitively understood by
victims of the Nazi holocaust -- indeed, by all of us
who are repelled by denial of that terrible episode in
history.

Thus the chances for long-term peace and
reconciliation would be greatly advanced if the
Israeli government were to stop hiding the truth. As
remote as peace seems today, halting the 55-year
cover-up and apologizing would place peace
negotiations between the two peoples on an entirely
different ground. At this stage, the dream of return
to Palestine is for many Palestinians a shield against
despair, and recognition of the right to return a
matter of great principle. A sincere Israeli apology
would be a milestone toward reconciliation that no
Palestinian could ignore.

Formidable obstacles lie in the path to apology. Many
Israelis doubt that Israel deliberately expelled the
Palestinians. But many others -- elders who remember
the events of 1948, or others who have read histories
of the period based on recently declassified documents
-- know the truth.

More difficult are Israeli fears about the
consequences of such an admission, especially the
possible return of large numbers of Palestinians to
Israel, and the attendant threat to the Jewish
character of their state. Yet establishing an
ethnically exclusive state in someone else's country
may not be a "right" that merits protection. Accepting
back refugees, who would form a larger Palestinian
minority in Israel than has been deemed ideal for
Jews, may be the price Israel must pay for
establishing a Jewish state in Arab Palestine.

Nor would an apology inevitably cause the return of
millions of Palestinian refugees. It is entirely
possible that, with the dignity of Palestinian
refugees ameliorated by an apology, Palestinians'
decisions regarding actual return would be based on
more purely pragmatic grounds.

Of course, part of Israel's political elite may still
seek exclusive Jewish control over all of former
Palestine, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip. If
so -- and there is much in current Israeli policy that
supports such an inference -- apology is the furthest
thing from their minds, and the regional forecast is
for blood. One must place hope in the small but
growing number of Israelis who see through the curtain
of fear behind which their leaders hide their
expansionist policies, and in the desires of manyother
Israelis to live a simple life of peace.

I can add personal testimony to the power of apology.
Last May, I wrote about going to visit my
grandparents' home in Jerusalem, and my exchanges with
its Jewish residents, and their attempts to deny my
family's connection to our home. After my story was
published, I heard from three other Israelis who had
lived there after its expropriation in 1948. Two of
the three discussed the home only casually, without
acknowledging my family's dispossession.

But the third person was different. His message to me
began: "I read your article with special interest, and
with an odd, but distorted sense of connection to
you." He explained that he was a native-born Israeli,
and while a member of the Haganah during the 1948 war,
was stationed in Villa Harun ar-Rashid for a period of
three months. He ended by saying that he would like to
meet me, and apologize for the taking of my family's
home.

Fortunately, the gentleman lived nearby and, indeed,
we met. After an hour of friendly conversation, this
dear man reached across the table, extending his hand,
and said: "I am sorry. I was blind. What we did was
wrong, but I participated in it and I cannot deny it."
He added: " I owe your family three months rent," and
we both broke into laughter.

It is hard to fully describe what I experienced. But
vindication was secondary to the tremendous surge of
admiration I felt for this man's moral courage. I was
inspired, truly, to match his humanity. Just that
response, writ large, is what awaits Israel if it
could bring itself to apologize to the Palestinians.
There is an untapped reservoir of Palestinian
magnanimity and good will that could transform the
relations between the two peoples, and make things
possible that are not possible today.