Chair Summary of Panel Discussion on “1948-2024: The Ongoing Palestinian Nakba” 

17 May 2024

Scroll down for PDF version

Panel discussion

“1948-2024: The Ongoing Palestinian Nakba”

Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People

United Nations Headquarters, New York  

ECOSOC Chamber 

______________________________________________________________________________

CHAIR SUMMARY

The Panel discussion “1948-2024: The Ongoing Palestinian Nakba” was held under the auspices of the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) on 17 May in the ECOSOC Chamber, UN Headquarters in New York. The event focused on the historical context of the 1948 events that lead to the mass displacement of Palestinians, a process still ongoing, and the responsibilities of the United Nations since 1948. The event also discussed the current situation in Gaza and escalating Israeli violations of international law in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Participants also shared updates on solidarity movements across the world and on the support of the international community towards Palestinian rights, including under applicable international law and international humanitarian law.

In organizing this event, the Committee wished to highlight state responsibilities to address the situation faced by Palestinians since 1948 and brought forward testimonies on the recent atrocities committed during the latest Israel war on Gaza. The event also contributed to maintaining Palestinian memory and sharing the Palestinians people’s story with Member States and the public while highlighting obligations and avenues for action.

At the opening, the Chair of the Committee, Ambassador Cheikh Niang (Senegal), reminded of the events of 1948 and subsequent years that led to the dispossession and displacement of approximately 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral land, a process that is still ongoing 76 years later. He also recalled that the war in Gaza had caused suffering unparalleled in recent history, with close to 40,000 Palestinians killed and almost 80,000 injured.  The Chair drew a comparison between the events of 1948 and the current situation in the Palestinian Occupied Territory. While international attention was focussing on Gaza, Israeli attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem – by its security forces and armed illegal settlers – had increased. Demolitions and expropriations of Palestinian land and properties, arbitrary detentions of Palestinian civilians, including children, and the “Judaization” process of East Jerusalem were all different facets of an all-encompassing ongoing process that had affected the Palestinian people over generations.

The Israeli response to the atrocities conducted by Hamas and other groups on 7 October 2023 had been disproportionate and indiscriminate, putting the international rights-based system under intense threat as the perpetrators of grave breaches were not held accountable. Conflict had been spreading in the Middle East, the Security Council appeared paralyzed, and Member States divided. Ambassador Niang called on all the various actors and concerned parties – citizens of their States, civil society organizations, Governments, and international organizations – to play their part, working together, to achieve a lasting and immediate ceasefire.

The Committee vowed to continue to advocate for those rights in the General Assembly and the Security Council, through events, social media, publications, the development of capacities of the Palestinian Government, international conferences, panels and delegation visits. The State of Palestine had recently been officially recognized by all Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member countries. This wave of support would hopefully carry towards the rest of the region and beyond. The Chair also called upon the international community – Member States and civil society alike – to redouble their efforts to end the Israeli occupation, end the ongoing Nakba, and bring to reality the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including to self-determination and independence, and a just resolution to the plight of Palestine refugees.

The representative of the State of Palestine, the Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations in New York, Minister Riyad Mansour, stated that the Nakba represented a personal tragedy for each Palestinian person, and family, but also a shared ordeal, an historic injustice endured by a whole nation. It had taken 75 years for the UN to recognize and commemorate the original Nakba, but this process of dispossession had never stopped. At this time in history, the Palestinians in Gaza only had the choice between displacement, subjugation or death. However, he underscored, there was now a universal recognition of the plight of the Palestinian people, and soon, it would be matched by universal recognition of Palestinian statehood. He added that there was a global consensus to end the Israeli occupation and to fulfil the realization of Palestinian rights.

Participants then heard poems read by Ms. Zeina Azzam, a Palestinian-American writer, poet, editor and community activist. In a moving and emotional intervention, Ms. Azzam touched upon the history of her family and of many others who had to flee Palestine during the Nakba. She recalled that thousands of children had died during the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza. In one of her poems, she said she was inspired by the testimony of a child in Gaza who had asked his parents to write his name on his leg, so that he could be identified if he had to die.

During the panel presentations, Mr. Ardi Imseis, Assistant Professor and Academic Director at Queen’s University, Ottawa, spoke of the UN responsibility in the original Nakba, and towards generations of Palestinians for the loss of their homes and identity. The Nakba had not been a single event but a protracted structure of dispossession, with no concrete actions to reverse its effects taken by those responsible for its inception. He described UN resolution 181 of 29 November 1947, which had recommended the partition of Palestine, as having violated international law because partition could never be legal without the freely expressed consent of the governed. The terms of the partition revealed thus a contempt for the principle of self-determination of peoples as applied to Palestine as a Class A mandated territory, rooted upon the idea of majority democratic rule.

This resolution had been passed at a time when Western countries, with settler-colonialist mindsets, dominated the United Nations. Palestinians thus became collateral victims of the horrors of the Holocaust against the Jewish people during World War II, and hundreds of years of persecution of Jewish populations on the territory of those same countries. Regrettably, these same states then had supported Israel’s multifaceted assaults on Palestinians over the following decades. Recalling the statement by Secretary-General Guterres that the events of 7 October had not happened in a vacuum, Mr. Imseis added that the current war on Gaza was the latest aggression in a process that never ended since the 1947 Partition Plan.

The second panellist, Ms. Karameh Kuemmerle, Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Doctors against Genocide, enumerated different aspects of the ongoing Nakba against Palestinians, from mass demolition and expulsion of communities to the expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands, executions, check points and detentions. She stated that it had been no surprise that Gaza, the biggest Palestinian city in the world, was the one that had been suffered the most brutal and most frequent attacks. The failure to recognize that a genocide was being perpetuated, despite overwhelming concrete evidence and documentation of its planning and implementation, allowed its perpetrators to feel empowered and act with impunity. As such, the recognition of the Nakba as a genocide stood as a cornerstone in South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Palestinians would never stop asking for their inalienable rights, she averred. During her work with Doctors Against Genocide, Ms. Kuemmerle had witnessed that Israelis were opposed to the two-State solution because they considered Palestinian existence as a threat to their own. Israelis consistently demanded for permanent reassurances of their security from Palestinians, without consideration for the security of Palestinians themselves. She added that this one-sided view prevented Palestinians to advocate for their rights, which was one of the main issues behind the creation of her organisation. Physicians were used to dealing with trauma and considered that life was sacred for all humans, independently from their ethnicity or religion. In Palestine, medical staff had measured the gravity of this trauma and witnessed that there was no access to health nor security anywhere. No people, no community must ever endure what Palestinians suffered since the Nakba and were still suffering. She spoke of the readiness of the medical community to support humanitarian efforts and the need to secure a safe passage for them, particularly those trapped in Rafah.

The third panellist, Ms. Phyllis Bennis, is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, and international advisor at Jewish Voice for Peace. In her presentation, she recalled that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide had been adopted in 1948, the same year when both the Nakba in Palestine and Apartheid in South Africa began. She described how both processes had been enabled by Western colonial interests. In particular, she pointed out that the United States had provided a similar kind of support to the Apartheid regime in South Africa to that it has and continues to provide to Israel. Thus, by providing weapons that have been used in the ongoing Nakba in Gaza the United States has been complicit in a genocide. In addition, the United States’ regular use of its veto in the Security Council gave Israel the impunity to attempt to destroy Gaza and force its population to flee. She called for a similar pressure by Member States that led to the sanctions on South Africa.

However, Ms. Bennis highlighted, the recent ICJ ruling recognizing the right of the Palestinians to be protected for possibly genocidal acts in Gaza was a step in the right direction while public opinion across the United States had shifted in an unprecedented manner, and the unabated support for Israel among Government officials and politicians could lead to repercussions in the 2024 US elections.

During the following discussion, representatives of Member States and Regional Organizations took the floor. South Africa stated that there was growing evidence of the genocidal intent of the Israeli operation in Gaza. Other Member States, including China, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Türkiye, reaffirmed their call upon Israel to stop the occupation of Palestinian territory, and called for an immediate ceasefire. Speakers stressed that the Gaza conflict had so far claimed tens of thousands of lives, and maimed many more, leaving millions of Palestinians caught in an unprecedented humanitarian emergency while Israel was still pressing on with its military attack on Rafah. After 76 years since the original Nakba, the right to self-determination of Palestinian people remained unfulfilled and the question of the Palestinian refugees unresolved. Member States warned against the growing resistance to recognize the Palestinians’ basic rights, including their rights of return and called for the implementation of relevant GA resolutions. Furthermore, Member States expressed their satisfaction with the recent GA vote that granted Palestine an enhanced participation in the UN General Assembly.

The representative of the League of Arab States (LAS) stressed that the international community’s primary mission was to prevent a new Nakba, whose aim was to displace Palestinians out of Gaza into other countries in the region. Stressing the need to explore mechanisms to prevent it, he thanked all those Member States who had supported the recent General Assembly resolution towards the eventual admission of Palestine as a fully-fledged member. He called on the countries who had abstained to reconsider their position and follow the increasing number of members of the international community who support Palestine, especially in light with the growing recognition of Palestine as a state in Latin America and the Caribbean. Calling for stronger accountability for the crimes perpetuated in Palestine, the representative of the LAS also welcomed the recent cases brought by South Africa before the ICJ and the other legal proceedings in support of Palestinian rights.

Minister Mansour praised the resilience of the Palestinian people and their determination to continue their struggle for the attainment of their inalienable rights. In the ensuing discussions, speakers and attendees called for the Nakba to be categorized as an act of genocide and to hold its perpetrators accountable. The question of Palestine must stay on top of the agenda of the international community and states must ensure that their relationship with Israel reflected their opposition to the ongoing Nakba, by taking concrete measures to put pressure on Israeli authorities. Moreover, public opinion around the world had been shifting toward greater support for Palestinian rights and civil society needed to put more pressure on their own governments to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and to keep funding UNRWA which remained essential for the life of millions of Palestine refugees.

In the closing session Ambassador Niang, highlighted how the commemoration of another year of the Palestinian Nakba had provided an important opportunity for reflection and for mobilization in pursuit of a just solution that would underpin peace and security for Palestinians, Israelis and the region as a whole.

* * *

***Note: This Summary attempts to provide an overall picture of the deliberations of the Conference. A detailed report, including specific questions that were addressed during the interactive discussions, will be published by the Division for Palestinian Rights in due course.