Washington, D.C. – US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has introduced a resolution to recognize the Palestinian Nakba, the term used to describe the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians before and during the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
The measure, proposed in the US House of Representatives on Wednesday, comes amid growing pressure from US progressives to promote Palestinian rights and limit US aid to Israel.
The motion describes the Nakba – Arabic for “catastrophe” – as “Israel’s uprooting, dispossession and exile of the Palestinian people from their homeland.”
“A just and lasting peace cannot be achieved without addressing the Nakba and remedying injustices against the Palestinian people,” the proposal reads, adding that the Nakba is the “root cause” of the problems Israelis and Palestinians face. to divide.
While Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat of Palestinian descent, was due to introduce the resolution this week, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy pushed for the cancellation of an event held by the congressman on Capitol Hill to commemorate the Nakba.
“This U.S. Capitol event is off,” McCarthy wrote on Twitter.
The memorial took place Wednesday, but was moved from the US Capitol Visitor Center to a nearby Senate office building — still on the Capitol campus.
With the change of venue, dozens of Palestinian rights supporters crowded into a Senate committee hearing room, with many sporting keffiyehs and Palestinian thobes.
“I’m saying it loud and clear by introducing a landmark resolution in Congress: The Nakba took place in 1948 and it never ended,” Tlaib told the crowd.
“This is the People’s Congress”
Earlier this week, Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the pro-Israel group the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), wrote a letter to McCarthy denouncing the event, describing that rights groups involved, including Jewish Voice for Peace Action, “anti -Israel and even anti-Semitic language”.
Greenblatt also accused Tlaib of using “inflammatory and offensive language,” including accusing Israel of imposing apartheid on Palestinians.
On Wednesday, Tlaib noted that several prominent human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, had come to the conclusion that Israel is imposing a system of apartheid on Palestinians.
“This is the people’s congress and you all have a right to exist,” Tlaib told those present.
The event was attended by Nakba survivors as well as academics and activists who emphasized that the dispossession of Palestinians has not stopped.
This is the second time Tlaib has introduced a Nakba resolution in Congress. This year, the measure was proposed just days before Palestinians and their supporters celebrate Nakba Day on May 15.
The resolution was co-sponsored by five Democrats, including Betty McCollum, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.
“The Nakba is not only a historic event,” the resolution reads, “but also an ongoing process characterized by Israel’s separate and unequal laws and policies toward Palestinians, including the destruction of Palestinian homes, construction and expansion of illegal settlements, and Israel’s confinement of Palestinians in ever-shrinking tracts of land.”
The measure is unlikely to pass in Congress, which remains staunchly pro-Israel despite the recent emergence of progressive voices critical of Israel.
But the Palestinian-American congresswoman told Al Jazeera in 2022 that one of the goals of the resolution is to raise awareness about the Nakba, noting that many of her colleagues are unfamiliar with the history of the Palestinians’ plight .
“I want them to understand what the Palestinian liberation movement is about, what human rights for Palestinians are really about — and it means understanding the history of what has happened to the Palestinians since 1948,” Tlaib said at the time.
‘To heal from our past, we must be honest about history’
About 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes when the Israeli state was established and hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages were wiped out in what many historians describe as a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Millions of survivors of the Nakba and their descendants still live in refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as neighboring Arab countries.
The Nakba is rarely discussed in mainstream US politics, where Israel has enjoyed widespread support from lawmakers and successive presidents of both major parties for decades.
Yet in late 2016, then-Secretary of State John Kerry made a rare reference to the Nakba as a top US official during the final weeks of former President Barack Obama’s administration.
“When Israel celebrates its 70th birthday in 2018, the Palestinians will celebrate a very different birthday: 70 years after what they call the Nakba or catastrophe,” Kerry said in a speech about the conflict.
Israel’s supporters often deny the Nakba, claiming that early Zionist settlers in Palestine came to a sparsely populated land and “brought the desert to blossom”—a claim dismissed as a myth by the Palestinians.
Tlaib’s resolution urges continued support for the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and calls for a ban on the use of US weapons to forcibly remove Palestinians from their land or demolish their homes.
In early May, Congressman McCollum also introduced a bill to limit US aid to Israel, to ensure it is not used to facilitate abuses against Palestinians, including the imprisonment of children.
Meanwhile, 14 Democratic lawmakers issued a letter last month urging President Joe Biden to investigate whether U.S. guns were being used to commit rights abuses against Palestinians.
While Congress remains overwhelmingly pro-Israel, many of the speakers at Wednesday’s Nakba memorial event found the irony that McCarthy managed to move the event but not make it go away.
‘We are displaced; how fitting?” So said the Palestinian-American academic and human rights advocate Noura Erakat.
McCarthy’s office did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
The groups organizing the event, including the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) and Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), hailed Wednesday’s gathering as “historic”.
“Kevin McCarthy again tried to put the Palestinians and our supporters in the spotlight, but we were not silenced,” they said in a joint statement, adding that denying the “documented truth of the Nakba” is anti-Palestinian. racism is.
“The event and resolution of Rep. Tlaib are important milestones that reflect the shift in support for Palestinian rights in this country. To heal from our past, we must be honest about history. Recognizing the Nakba is an important step towards freedom and justice for the Palestinians.”