The Forgotten Palestinians: a fresh perspective on the Nakba

The Jewish academic Ilan Pappé argues that the Nakba was nothing short of a premeditated and systematically violent ethnic cleansing programme.

The Forgotten Palestinians Ilan Pappé MPG Books Group Dh73

Ilan Pappé argues that the Nakba, the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians from Israel in the middle of the last century, was nothing short of a premeditated and systematically violent ethnic cleansing programme. The campaign, he asserts, led to the creation of a "latent apartheid" system, an ethnocracy in which the Arabs remaining in the country are second-class citizens who are perceived by the country's Jewish majority as outsiders in their own land and viewed as a "strategic threat" to their state.

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Drawing a parallel with Nazi war crimes, Pappé, a Jewish academic, cites the shocking example of the 1956 massacre at Kafr Qassem, where the Israeli army shot in cold blood 48 villagers, including children and a pregnant woman. This atrocity, he explains, was carried out as part of a secret strategy known as Blueprint S-59, a failed attempt to use state terrorism to drive the remaining Palestinian population out of the country.

Meticulously researched, scholarly and highly readable, The Forgotten Palestinians provides a fresh perspective on an enduring and systemic injustice that has never received the level of attention it deserves outside the Middle East.