Raja Shehadeh, The Electronic Intifada, 21 May 2008
(Raja Shehadeh is an attorney in Ramallah and author of Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Palestinian Landscape, which won the Orwell Prize in Britain last month. It will be released in the United States in June.)
".....It was after being repeatedly confronted with this argument that I became convinced that Israel's unwillingness to recognize the Nakba is integral to its continuation of illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. The incessant building of more settlements in the 23 percent of Palestine left for us to establish our state can only mean that Israel does not recognize our existence as a nation entitled, like all other nations, to self determination. Otherwise how could they support a settlement policy that deprives us of our right to our land?
By continuing its four-decade-old settlement policy Israel, is, in effect, seeking to make our lives so intolerable that we would be driven away from our land, albeit at a slower pace than was the case during the Nakba, 60 years ago."
".....It was after being repeatedly confronted with this argument that I became convinced that Israel's unwillingness to recognize the Nakba is integral to its continuation of illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. The incessant building of more settlements in the 23 percent of Palestine left for us to establish our state can only mean that Israel does not recognize our existence as a nation entitled, like all other nations, to self determination. Otherwise how could they support a settlement policy that deprives us of our right to our land?
By continuing its four-decade-old settlement policy Israel, is, in effect, seeking to make our lives so intolerable that we would be driven away from our land, albeit at a slower pace than was the case during the Nakba, 60 years ago."
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