Salman Abu Sitta
Mondoweiss / January 28, 2025
Israel has never understood Palestinian resilience. We survived the Gaza Genocide, like catastrophes before it, through the call to Return home, the fuel for Palestinian survival. For Palestinians, the Right of Return is and will always be the Issue.
The war waged against the Palestinian people is the longest and most sustained in recent history. For over a hundred years, since the Balfour Declaration, a war of death and destruction has been waged against the Palestinian people in Palestine and wherever they reside, raining death and destruction on them.
The myth of Palestine as “a land without a people” in the 19th century has been converted into a Zionist plan of action to make it so; a ruined land with its people dead or expelled.
Since the creation of the Zionist colonial project of establishing Israel on the ruins of Palestine in 1948, I witnessed, indeed endured in my lifetime, three historical stations worthy of contemplation. The first station is 1948 (Al-Nakba). The second station is 1967 (Al-Naksa), the year of the Israeli invasion of Arab lands, known as the Six-Day War of 1967 [1967 June War] and the third station is the present Genocide of 2023-2025.
These can be measured by three parameters: the area of the conquered territory, the number of killed or displaced people, and the level of destruction of their landscape.
Al-Nakba
In Al-Nakba of 1948, the Haganah, the forerunner of the Israeli army, invaded and conquered 20,500 km2 (including 1,400 km2 obtained through the British Mandate collusion). This territory was 78% of Palestine. In the course of ten months, 120,000 Israeli soldiers in 9 brigades carried out 31 military operations and attacked and depopulated 530 cities and villages. Their population, now 9 million people, are refugees living in exile since. Their landscape: houses, structures, and historical features were totally destroyed. On the three parameters, Israel – then just declared – scored full marks. Palestine became a land without a people.
On May 14, 1948, Israeli soldiers attacked and destroyed my village Al-Ma’in, and expelled my family. I became a refugee and have been one since. On the same day, David Ben-Gurion declared the settlers’ state of Israel in Tel Aviv.
What was the world’s reaction? The Arab world was shocked at the impotence of its armies and the inaction of their leaders. In the following decade, between 1950 – 1960, two Arab leaders were assassinated, one was dethroned, two kingdoms were converted to republics, and one changed rulers several times.
The UN passed the famous Resolution 194, which calls for the refugees’ return, and established UNRWA for their relief. The Western world was totally oblivious to the plight of Palestinians, stripped of their historical patrimony by East Europeans who arrived at their shores in smugglers’ ships.
Al-Naksa
In the second historical station, the 1967 war, Israel occupied huge areas of Arab lands: the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), the Gaza Strip, the Sinai, the Golan Heights, and later, South Lebanon. The total area was some 68,000 km2 — or more than three times the area of the newly declared state of Israel.
In the early morning of June 5, 1967, I took the plane from Beirut to London. On arrival, I learned that it was the last plane to leave Beirut airport. I learned that Israel had waged an all-out war on several Arab countries. In the London hotel, I was in a daze. I saw the news of the fall of Jerusalem, Al-Khalil (Hebron), Nablus, and Gaza. In the previous 19 years, we dreamed of going in the opposite direction, returning to Jaffa and Haifa and hundreds of villages. What was more devastating was the joy, the glee, the delighted crowds in the streets under my window celebrating our dashed hopes of freedom and branding us as the villains.
The human casualty was measurable: several hundred Egyptian soldiers laid in rows and were run over by Israeli tanks and 300,000 Palestinian refugees crossed the River Jordan and became refugees for a second time, now in Jordan.
The destruction included ripping up Egyptian railway lines to Palestine and other Egyptian installations in Sinai. Of the three parameters, the area conquered was by far the largest.
The world reaction was mute.
The (Western) world approved the Israeli attack as justified, but voted for UN Resolution 242, which called on Israel to withdraw from (all) occupied territory.
However, Israel gained unprecedented victory. Egypt opted out of the war against Israel by signing a peace treaty with it in 1979. Sadat, who signed it, was assassinated. Jordan did, too, by renouncing its rule over the West Bank. Both countries recognized Israel, indicating that the land neighbouring their borders is not Palestinian, but Israeli.
That was the height of Israeli victory; a reward for its attacks, occupation, and massacres.
At that same moment, a dormant element in the equation, the absent party, was awakened. The Palestinian resistance movement was recognized in the form of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Palestine Parliament, or the Palestine National Council (PNC). In 1974, Arafat, as PLO leader, spoke at the UN.
The 1967 war was the embodiment of the Israeli claim to legitimacy, the West’s plain collusion with it, the failure of the Arab rulers, and the rise of the Palestinian role in defending themselves.
Of the three parameters, Israel conquered the largest territory, killed a number of people, and caused little permanent damage. It was a victory for foot soldiers.
The Gaza genocide
The third historical date, 2023-2025, is still with us. It has new features and new dimensions.
Of its three parameters, the devastation and the scale of destruction are unprecedented, even compared with WWII. The Gaza Strip, where 2.3 million Palestinians, most of them refugees, lived in 365 km2 (1.3% of Palestine), has become a literal pile of rubble. The human loss of life is unprecedented. An estimated 200,000 have been killed and injured, but the true number is not yet known. Still, that would equate to 35 million Americans on a U.S. scale. But in the course of 15 months, Israel gained no new territory. This is a remarkable departure from previous historical records and even a reversal of previous precedents.
The same, to a lesser degree, was seen on the Lebanon and Syria fronts: maximum destruction, massive loss of life, and little gained territory.
Why is this?
The last Israeli war was a war conducted online: through F35 cockpits or by drones sent by a click on computer boards in air-conditioned rooms. The Israeli foot soldier is largely absent. There were no boots on the ground.
That was for a reason. Video clips from Gaza showed Israelis moving only in tanks with F35s above. When soldiers ventured out, they were shot down by Palestinian snipers, killing some, while others ran away. We have seen social media videos of Israeli soldiers dragged to the Gaza front. The myth of the invincible Israeli army has been shattered, while the blood of slain women and children has forever erased the myth of “the most moral army” in the world.
The Gaza genocide took unusual dimensions beyond the mass murder of civilians: it is the torture of the living. Israel starved the children, denying them water, milk, and food, and inflicted attacks causing the amputation of the limbs of thousands of children. Their families lived in torn tents in the mud under the rain. Israel killed or humiliated doctors by parading them naked and imprisoning them. Israel destroyed all the structures supporting life in Gaza.
Then comes Trump’s call for yet another ethnic cleansing of Gaza, a seal of approval for the incomplete genocide of Gaza.
But it is the world’s reaction that has been among the most surprising and most welcome after the recent genocide.
As a child during Al-Nakba, I can hardly recall anybody in the world knowing about us. The Western world was busy celebrating the victory of the righteous few over the savage many, who denied them “the right to recover their 2,000-year-old home.”
During the 1967 war and after, the hostility in the West against us was no less than the Israeli massacres on the ground. It took Edward Said more than ten years to get recognition for his book, Orientalism, which described Western prejudice.
Today, social media has broken all barriers. Young people in over 150 universities spoke the truth long concealed. The young people are the first to expose hypocrisy by shouting, “The Emperor has no clothes!” Streets in world cities, even in Western countries, are filled with weekly demonstrations against the Israeli genocide.
The UN issued one resolution after another during this period. The ICC and ICJ issued unprecedented judgments against Israeli war criminals.
But the Israeli society in occupied Palestine in 1948 and 1967 is still oblivious to the real world. They still want Gaza and its people to be eliminated, with the dream of building beach houses on Gaza’s shores. Trump’s daydream of emptying Gaza and dumping its people in Egypt and Jordan, at the behest of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, echoes the same desire. It qualifies him to be presented at the Hague for war crime intent.
However, many Jews in the West changed their mind. They saw the ugliness of Israeli crimes and spoke about it. They gathered courage in increasing numbers to denounce Israel and Zionism. The whole world now sees Israel exposed as it is: a criminal colonial project.
Can this flood of support for Palestine across the world overcome the residual blind support for Israel in the United States, the UK, and Germany? Time will tell.
The lesson Israel refuses to learn
The glee and joy shared among the absolute majority of Israelis at the death and destruction in Gaza and the calls for more are sure signs of a sick Israeli society that is dangerous to the world. Indeed, these dimensions of Israeli crimes will be an indelible mark in Jewish history, superseding any in their past.
But also, the sight of tens of thousands of Palestinians pushed to the south of Gaza now trying to return to the north after the ceasefire, carrying their belongings on their backs, waiting for the news of the release of one hostage, to return to the rubble in the north which was their home, will also be indelible in the Zionist records.
The lesson that the war criminals have never learned is the resilience of the Palestinian people. The innocent lives we have lost and our daily suffering beyond description are the price we have paid, and are paying, for a singular aim we have maintained for 76 years: the Right to Return home. This return home includes even returning to a previous refuge in a refugee camp on the soil of Palestine, if not yet to the historical home in Palestine before 1948.
This lesson is incomprehensible to the war criminals, but this calling is the fuel to the survival of the Palestinians. For Palestinians, the Right of Return is and will always be the issue.
I recall a letter sent by a Quaker relief agent in Gaza as early as October 12, 1949, to his office in Philadelphia. He wrote:
“Above all else, they desire to go home—back to their lands. This desire naturally continues to be the strongest demand they make; sixteen months of exile has not diminished it. Without it, they would have nothing for which to live. It is expressed in many ways and forms every day. “Why keep us alive” — is one expression of it. It is as genuine and deep as a man’s longing for his home can be.”
This remains the same 76 years later today.
The inevitably of Return
A reviewer of Palestine’s history will come to the conclusion that the Right of Return must be inevitably implemented and the Palestinians shall return home. This right is sacred to any Palestinian, legal in every line of international law, and feasible when implemented. In the studies we made over the years, in figures and maps, we showed it is feasible with minimum displacement of peaceful Jews. The study showed that 88% of Israeli Jews live in 7% of Israel or 1400 km2. The rest is held by the kibbutzim to prevent the return of the refugees and mainly by the Israeli army. When Zionism is abolished, most refugees can return home to their emptied land.
This case is more striking in Gaza. Gaza refugees were expelled from 247 villages in the southern half of Palestine by scores of massacres. They live in Gaza concentration camps at a density of 8,000 persons per km2. When north Gaza was pushed by Israel to the south, the density became 20,000 persons/km2, a hell on earth.
Only 150,000 Jewish settlers live on their land in the kibbutzim at a density of 7 persons per km2. Some of those were taken hostage on October 7.
These comparative figures shake the foundation of any justice.
So, will Return be achieved?
The struggle of the Palestinians will no doubt continue. The popular world support will continue but may fade unless solidified in organizations. The colonial West will continue to feed bombs, money, and political support to Israel.
But the worst present enemy of Palestinians lies in an unexpected corner: the Arab rulers. Not only have they recently failed Palestinians on every occasion, but they frequently acted with Israel against them and against the wish of their own people.
My prediction is that, just like after 1948, the Arab people will respond accordingly in their countries.
At our doorstep, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has acted plainly as a Palestinian quisling, a plain agent of the enemy. It is not surprising that the West and Arab rulers prevented, by threats and bribes, the election of a new Palestinian National Council representing 14 million Palestinians, two-thirds of whom were born after the ill-fated Oslo Accords. True representations of the Palestinians must take place.
But as any Palestinian will tell you, we never lose hope nor give up our struggle for freedom. If you do not believe me, look at Gaza in the last 15 months. Look at Gaza in the next ten years, when 18,000 orphans today join the resistance movement.
Salman Abu Sitta is the founder and president of the Palestine Land Society, London, dedicated to the documentation of Palestine’s land and People. He is the author of six books on Palestine including the compendium “Atlas of Palestine 1917- 1966,” English and Arabic editions, the “Atlas of the Return Journey” and over 300 papers and articles on the Palestinian refugees, the Right of Return, and the history of al Nakba and human rights. He is credited with extensive documentation and mapping of Palestine’s land and people over 40 years. His widely acclaimed memoir “Mapping my Return” describes his life in Palestine and his long struggle as a refugee to return home.
