The prevailing narrative among most Palestinians and their advocates the world over is that Israel forcefully ejected some 750,000 local Arabs prior to and during its War of Independence. Those displaced persons then grew into the millions of “Palestinian refugees” that the international community now insists have a “right to return.”
But that is a gross distortion of what actually occurred in most cases during those tumultuous years. In modern parlance, it’s fake news.
And it was none other than a Hamas-linked Gazan journalist who helpfully set the record straight in an otherwise anti-Israel piece published on “Nakba Day” earlier this week.
Writing for the Hamas website palinfo.com, Ibrahim Al-Madhoun acknowledges that…
“Sadly, the armies of several Arab regimes had a hand in persuading the people and the villages to leave and to abandon their homes, on the pretext of protecting [the villages] and fighting the Zionist gangs. The Palestinians believed and trusted them and the families left, hoping that the Zionist gangs would be defeated and their strength would be broken…
“Palestinians sold their wives’ jewelry to buy a single rifle to defend their village, but the Arab armies collected their weapons and promised them they would fight on their behalf. They took the weapons and sent the [Palestinian] fighters away, and then they withdrew without putting up a fight.”
Perhaps surprising to many, this account is actually in line with what Israel has been saying for years–that most of the 750,000 original Palestinian refugees were the result of failed Arab tactics, and not expulsion by Jewish forces.
Al-Madhoun went on to complain that “when our parents left…they thought they were leaving only temporarily,” and that had they known the Arab armies would lose to Israel, they would have preferred to stay and take their chances against the Jews.
The point of the article was to charge those same surrounding Arab countries with once again abandoning the Palestinians by cozying up to Israel and sounding support for a resolution to the conflict that fails to “liberate Palestine.”
“Today the ball and idea are back in the same court and the Arab regimes are playing the same role of colluding with the occupation. These regimes are besieging our people, fighting it and treating to it with hostility, and pressuring it to surrender its weapons and surrender to ‘Israel.’”
But this time, insisted Al-Madhoun, the Palestinians won’t be so naive as to listen to the Arab regimes. This time, the Palestinians will lead the fight themselves. And this time, they have a secret weapon: the Israeli Arabs.
Amid a fresh wave of anti-Israel violence fueled by the “mobilization of the [Arab] residents of Jerusalem” and the “fidelity of the ’48 Palestinians [ie. the Israeli Arabs] to their national identity,” Al-Madhoun insists that “we are closer than ever to victory and liberation.”
Translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
Hat tip: JNS
