58 years after the Nakba (The Great Catastrophe) in Palestine

Tehran Times Opinion Column, May 17, By Hassan Hanizadeh
58 years after the Nakba in Palestine

TEHRAN, May 16 (MNA) -- When the sun descended behind the Al Khalil mountains on May 15, 1948, the inhabitants of the verdant village of Kafar Qasem in Palestine were once again waiting for the men to return from the fields.

Reports then began trickling in of a massacre of Palestinians carried out by members of the terrorist organizations the Hagana and the Stern Gang in a nearby village.

The family of Mahmud al-Natsha, one of the poor farmers of Kafar Qasem, was waiting for him to return, but suddenly a terrible sound descended over the entire village.

The Zionist terrorists, backed by British colonial forces, entered the village and massacred innocent women and children.

Seven of the eight members of the family of Mahmud al-Natsha were among the victims of this terrorist attack carried out by the Hagana.

Hagana’s leader at the time was none other than Menachem Begin, who later went on to become prime minister of the Zionist regime, despite his terrorist past.

Late at night, when Mahmud al-Natsha returned to his humble house, he saw the lifeless bodies of his wife and children.

The Hagana’s terrorist attack left over 200 dead just in Kafar Qasem, all of whom were innocent women and children.

Terror had filled all the villages in Palestine and most families began to head for the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, seeking safety from the terrorist attacks.

Concurrently with this, with the cooperation of Zionist capitalists and the Jewish Agency, the British government, which feigned concern for the lives of the Palestinians, leased ships under the flags of various countries in order to transfer the traumatized Palestinians to neighboring Arab countries.

During the process of this transfer from the occupied territories of Palestine to Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt, hundreds of Palestinian women and children were drowned in the Mediterranean Sea when their boats capsized.

On the very same day, i.e., May, 15, 1948, Zionist leader David Ben Gurion read out the announcement of the establishment of the Zionist regime at a conference attended by Yitzhak Shamir, Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres, Golda Meir, and Chaim Herzog.

In less than 20 minutes, U.S. president Harry Truman issued a statement recognizing the Israeli regime.

Everything was formally arranged for the occupation of Palestine and the establishment of the Zionist regime in the occupied territories, and in less than three days, most European countries recognized the newly created regime.

The goal of the colonial powers of the time, France and Britain, which were also the victors of World War II, was to establish a gendarme in the Middle East to oversee their interests in the region.

Their first objective was to safeguard the Suez Canal for the free passage of British and French warships from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Without access to the Suez Canal, French and British warships and cargo vessels would have been obliged to travel thousands of nautical miles further in order to reach the North Atlantic Ocean from the Indian Ocean.

Their second objective was to establish a non-Islamic country in the critical Fertile Crescent in order to prevent the expansion of political Islam on the western shores of the Mediterranean.

Their third objective was to maintain security in the oil fields of the Middle East, because Britain’s initial test drillings in the region showed that the Middle East was sitting on a sea of oil.

Therefore, the Zionist regime achieved rapid economic and technological progress, with the cooperation of France, Britain, and later the United States, and within a period of less than two decades produced an arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Now, 58 years have passed since Palestine’s Nakba or great catastrophe.

During these years, with the financial support of the United States and other Western countries, Israel has occupied over 80,000 square kilometers of Arab territories in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in Palestine, the Sinai Peninsula and Sharm al-Shaikh in Egypt, the Golan Heights in Syria, the Shebaa Farms in Lebanon, and parts of Jordan.

Although some of these occupied territories have been returned to Egypt and Jordan under Camp David and other agreements since 1978, Israel has kept control of the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Shebaa Farms.

Over 150 UN Security Council resolutions against Israel have been vetoed by the United States in the past 58 years.

Now, after years of struggle, the Palestinian forces have decided to establish a Palestinian government. However, the United States, the European Union, and Israel are trying to ignore the vote of the majority and are economically boycotting Hamas, the party which gained control of the Palestinian government through a democratic election.

Will conditions in Palestine remain the same or will the world will witness another wave of violence in the occupied territories?

Undoubtedly, the stances of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, and regional countries as well as fair interaction of these countries with the Palestinian nation will determine the fate of this critical region.

If the pressure on the Hamas government is increased, all Palestinian political and resistance groups will unite. Under such circumstances, the region will witness great violence in the future which major powers will no longer be able to control.

SA/HG

End

MNA

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