In Israel and around the world today, demonstrators mark the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” which followed Israel’s declaration of independence on May 14, 1948, three years after V-E Day and the end of the Holocaust.
Jewish leaders living under the British Mandate accepted the UN partition plan of 1947 — the two-state solution, we now call it. Arab leaders there rejected it.
Across the Middle East, rejection of the two-state solution has remained common. Iran is the loudest voice in that choir these days. “Palestine spans from the river [Jordan] to the [Mediterranean] sea,” supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared last October, in case anyone had any doubts what his thoughts on that subject might be. “Nothing less.”
Jonathan Tobin at Commentary:
For those who claim the Middle East conflict is about borders or Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the prominence given Nakba commemorations ought to be an embarrassment as it highlights something Israel’s critics are often at pains to obfuscate. The goal of the Palestinians isn’t an independent state alongside Israel. Their goal is to eradicate Israel and replace it with yet another Arab majority country.
Read the rest here.