The very fact of Israel’s existence was branded a “catastrophe”—nakba in Arabic—but not the displacement that affected both sides in the subsequent war, which included the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from what became the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. And during and after Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from Arab lands; that is, in fact, the true nakba.
AuthorBassem Eid
Bassem Eid is a Palestinian human-rights activist, political analyst and journalist.