604

Sixty years ago yesterday, David Ben-Gurion declared the rebirth of the state of Israel. After being driven out of their homeland thousands of years before, and after the horrific nightmare that had just ended in Germany and occupied Europe, it must have been an unimaginably exhilarating moment for Jews everywhere.

One day later, and sixty years ago today, Arab armies invaded the new state of Israel. Palestinians who were caught between the armies — hundreds of thousands of men, women, children — fled or were driven out of their homeland. When the fighting finally ended in 1949, the Palestinians who left were barred from returning.

So as Israelis celebrate their 60th anniversary, Palestinian refugees — now several million of them — remember May 15, 1948, as the day their homes and their world were taken away from them, and the day their catastrophe began.

Today, the right of return seems unrealistic, impossible to accomplish. But back in 1949, that was not the case. So why were these people kept from returning to their rightful homes within the state of Israel? According to Israeli historian Benny Morris:

Israel "would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. There was no choice but to expel that population."

It's simple mathematics. A large and growing Palestinian population was a threat to a Jewish-majority state. And in 1948-1949, with the deep scars of the holocaust so fresh and still so painful, the Jews had already lost far too much, and there was far too much to gain. Never Again, they pledged, and who could blame them.

The Israeli declaration of independence names the holocaust "catastrophe" as "another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State." It's a compelling moral argument even today, and in 1948 it was many times more so.

But I can't help thinking that at some point in the future, maybe just dozens of years from now, or maybe thousands, the fortunes of these two unfortunate peoples will be reversed, and it will be the Palestinians who pledge Never Again, and end their "catastrophe," at the expense of the Jews, by "solving the problem of its homelessness" and establishing a Palestinian state, with a Palestinian majority, in what is now called Israel.

And who could blame them?