CRSV: Palestine during The Nakba (1948)

This case note documents the occurrence of sexual violence in violent conflict. It contains explicit mentions of different forms of sexual assault. Reader discretion is advised.

Background of the Conflict*

The Nakba means “disaster” or “catastrophe” in Arabic. Also called the Palestinian Catastrophe, the term is used to describe the destruction of the Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of large numbers of Palestinian Arabs from their lands, as a result of the creation of the State of Israel (Masalha, 1992). In 1947, the United Nations had proposed a partition plan in 1947, where 56% of Palestinian territory was assigned to the future Jewish state, and the Palestinian majority was to receive only 44% of the territory (Sa'di & Abu-Lughod, 2007). However, Palestine rejected this because they saw this as a plan for the Jews to push them out of their own lands. On May 14, 1948, the land was declared as the State of Israel by David Ben-Gurion. As much as 78% of Palestine was declared as Israel, and as a result, around 700,000 Palestinians were expelled, and over 500 villages were depopulated and destroyed (Khalidi, 1992). Subsequently, the Palestinian Arabs have faced geographical and ethnic erasure, the denial of the right to return, and the creation of Palestinian refugees (Sa'di & Abu-Lughod, 2007). The Nakba encompasses the displacement, dispossession, statelessness, and breakdown of Palestinian society (Sa'di, 2002).

Prevalence of Sexual Violence

Sexual violence was used during the Nakba (Al Issa & Beck, 2021). The Israeli military was known to spread rumours of rape or to threaten and participate in gang rapes and individual rapes targeting Arab women (Pappe, 2006; Zinngrebe, 2016). For example, there is a report of a rape of a young Palestinian girl in the Negev by 20 Israeli soldiers, as part of a celebratory ceremony by the soldiers and their commander – ending with the girl being shot in the desert (Tahhan, 2015). There are very few publicly accessible documents documenting the systemic deployment of sexual violence and rape (Al Issa & Beck, 2021).

According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Israel has removed historical documents to conceal proof of the Nakba (Shezaf, 2019). Palestinian oral histories have been discredited and considered a poor alternative to historical research drawing on archives and written texts (Nashef, 2022). Additionally, the stigma around rape has also led to silence around the issue (Dylann, 2018). However, as Slyomovics (2007: 36-37) noted, “Silence is also informative: if no confirmation exists in archival sources that something did or did not happen, such silences merely inform about a lack in the documentation and not that the information does not exist.” Shalhoub Kevorkian (2005) reported that women and girls reported facing rape and sexual violence while fleeing their homes in 1948.

Basis of the use of Sexual Violence

Actual and threats of sexual violence and rape were used to intimidate and threaten women and their families to leave, in order for the Jews arriving into the land to access housing and land (Pappe, 2006). It was also deployed as a means to humiliate and shame women and girls, and by extension, their families, communities, and societies, given the stigma around rape and the setback it produces to family and social dynamics. In effect, it was used as part of an effort to further settler colonialism and occupation.

References

• Al Issa, F. A. R., & Beck, E. (2021). Sexual violence as a war weapon in conflict zones: Palestinian women’s experience visiting loved ones in prisons and jails. Affilia, 36(2), 167-181.

• Dylann, N. (2018). "Sexual Harassment and Violence against Palestinian Women in Israeli Prisons." https://thejerusalemfund.org/2018/08/sexual-harassment-and-violence/

• Khalidi, Rashid I. (1992). "Observations on the Right of Return". Journal of Palestine Studies. 21 (2): 29–40.

• Masalha, N. (1992). Expulsion of the Palestinians. Institute for Palestine Studies.

• Nashef, H. A. (2022). Suppressed Nakba Memories in Palestinian Female Narratives: Susan Abulhawa’s The Blue Between Sky and Water and Radwa Ashour’s The Woman From Tantoura. Interventions, 24(4), 567-585.

• Pappe, I. (2006). The ethnic cleansing of Palestine. One World.

• Sa'di, Ahmad H. (2002). "Catastrophe, Memory and Identity: Al-Nakbah as a Component of Palestinian Identity". Israel Studies. 7 (2): 175–198.

• Sa'di, A. H., & Abu-Lughod, L. (2007). Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory. Columbia University Press.

• Shezaf, H. (2019). Burying the Nakba: How Israel Systematically hides evidence of 1948 expulsion of Arabs. Haaretz. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-how-israel-systematically-hides-evidence-of-1948-expulsion-of-arabs-1.7435103

• Slyomovics, S. (2007). The rape of Qula, a destroyed Palestinian village. Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the claims of memory, 27-51.

• Zinngrebe, K. (2016). Open space reflections on the silence on sexual violence among Palestinian feminists in Israel. Feminist Review, 112, 85–91.

**Drawing from the work of “Decolonize Palestine,” we use the term “Palestine question” as opposed to “conflict.” However, we used "conflict" here for the purposes of the template in the observatory. Decolonize Palestine explains the terminology as follows: The term “conflict” is inadequate to describe the Palestinian question. It holds within it connotations of symmetry, of two conflicting and equal parties, rather than a case of an indigenous population resisting colonial dispossession and ethnocide. It obfuscates that this is not some local squabble between two already existing populations, but a case of foreign settlers seizing land to construct an exclusivist ethnocracy at the expense of the natives. Settler colonialism, by its very definition, is unequal (Read more here).