Independence and Nakba: Intertwined and inseparable -
By Avraham Burg | May 5, 2014 |
Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.588991
Israel’s Independence Day is also Nakba Day. This is inescapable. The reality of Israeliness can’t help but incorporate not only the Jewish story but the Palestinian story as well (Nakba, or “the catastrophe,” is the Palestinians’ term for what happened to them when the state was founded in 1948.)
Space limitations prevent a full consideration here of the complex interrelations between Independence and Nakba. But the pivotal question today is not, “Who’s to blame?” or “Who started it?” or “Who didn’t do enough?” The pivotal question is a thoroughly practical one: Can the Nakba and Independence coexist in the same space?
If the answer of the Jewish-Israeli public is that the two are mutually exclusive, it follows that we should revoke the clauses in Israel’s Declaration of Independence that mandate equality for all: “The State of Israel … will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants … will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the holy places of all religions …”
If the answer to the question is that the two cannot coexist, Israel becomes the state of all its Jews, with all that this implies. Jewish, yes, but a lot less democratic; much more ethnic, far less civic.