Nakba: A Defining Time
1947 - 1950

Mostly historical information to provide context around a time that changed everything for Palestinian life altogether: the 1947 UN Partition plan and 1948 Nakba.

World War II
During the second world war, less than three decades after the first, Germany carried out a holocaust of six million Jewish people. It was, unquestionably, a tragedy.

Jews who fled persecution from the late 1930's through the early-to-mid 1940's were admitted – in limited numbers – to countries such as Spain, Switzerland, Portgual, and the United States. Many also attempted to go to Palestine.

After WWII officially ended in 1945, there was also the question of where all of the displaced Jewish people would go. At this time, the U.S. tried to persuade Britain to allow 100,000 of the ~250,000 total displaced Jews to go to Palestine, which was rejected.

Over this period, Britain went through a series of attempts to figure out next steps as they tried to temper the waves of illegal immigration and the Arab response to it.

Ultimately, they weren’t able to find an agreed-upon solution. As a result, they decided to pass the responsibility on to the United Nations.

UN Partition Plan
The United Nations had been created in 1945, succeeding the League of Nations, under the declared goal of protecting international peace and security.

In 1947, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181. This got rid of the British Mandate on Palestine, replacing it with a plan for partitioning the land into two states – an Arab and a Jewish state. (This also included declaring Jerusalem and Bethlehem as part of an international zone and to be administered by the UN.)

At this time, Jews owned about 6% of the land and were barely a third of the population. However, the UN partition allocated them 56% of land.

There was immediate pushback that the amount allocated for the Jewish state was unjust. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs (both Muslims and Christians) would be forced to live in this Jewish State. It would also leave the designated “Arab State” without important agricultural lands and seaports.

The decision was rejected by the Arab community, who still wanted an independent, singular, and self-governing state – including full rights for both the country’s Arab majority and for the Jewish people who had already been there as legal citizens.

The plan continued in spite of the opposition. As the Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question notes, “it gave international legitimacy to the Zionist conquest of Palestine by force of arms.”

Nakba
Immediately after the UN plan in November 1947, Zionist forces began to target Arab villages and residential quarters.

This included forcibly displacing Palestinians from their homes both within the new “Jewish State” lines and outside of the UN border lines.

Zionist had several militias ready to fight and had already been importing a massive amount of arms throughout the British Mandate period. Palestinians, on the other hand, had no major official fighting groups at this time.

In the Spring of 1948, attacks ramped up dramatically after the official adoption of Plan Dalet, which was essentially a call for ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinian Arabs through the destruction of villages.

One of the most notable attacks was the Deir Yassin massacre at the start of April 1948 that left over 100 Palestinian martyrs. This was also used as a Zionist propaganda tool to spread fear. They wanted to get as much land as possible before the British Mandate reign officially ended, so they continued to attack villages.

On May 14, 1948, the British forces withdrew. Afterwards, the “Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel” was announced by David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister and former head of the World Zionist Organization. The United States also recognized the “State of Israel” on the very same day.

Neighboring Arab countries, who were harboring many refugees, went to war with Zionist forces after the self-proclaimed state declaration. Fighting continued into 1949, ultimately to no avail. By the end, more than 500 villages and 10 cities were depopulated. There were invasions, bombings of homes, looting, and destruction all around these areas.

This period of ethnic cleansing is referred to as Al-Nakba, which loosely translates as “The Catastrophe” from Arabic to English – though that does not do sufficient justice to what happened. (It is often referred to in English-language context just as the Nakba.)

15,000 were martyred and over 750,000 Palestinians (around two-thirds of the Arab population) were ethnically cleansed from their homes to either refugee camps within Palestine or to other neighboring countries like Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.

Zionists had taken up 78% of historical Palestine. Overall, there was over four million acres of Palestinian land estimated to be stolen at this time.

There were around 150,000 Palestinians who remained inside the “Israeli” borders after, a quarter of whom were internally displaced. These Palestinians were technically given “Israeli citizenship” but lost most of their land and were subjected to a violent rule after.

From the territories remaining outside of these “Israeli” borders, those did not even become an independent Palestinian state either. Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip and Jordan took control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both places then becoming home to many refugee camps.

In December 1949, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was established. In what was supposed to initially be a temporary program, the UN sought to provide temporary humanitarian assistance, education, work programs, refugee camp infrastructure, and more. However, this was a drop in the bucket after the damage of the UN Partition decision that led to the nightmare in the first place.

In addition to the immense human tragedy, Kamal Boullata writes about the impact of the previously-growing art scene after the Naka:

“Much of the art objects produced over the four decades preceding those bloody months were rendered irretrievable in the wake of the victors' widespread looting.

All traces of the cultural enterprise of Palestinian modernity were obscured, as its advocates were dispersed and the accomplishments of a century and a half of development in a native pictorial art were doomed to oblivion.”

Naksa: Further Occupation
1967 - 1970

Mostly historical information to help provide some context around how the years after the Nakba in 1948 led to the Naksa in 1967 – and the first few years that followed. Plus, some art developments after the initial impact.

The Decades Leading Up To 1968
For the 750,000 Palestinian refugees from the Nakba, many hoped to come back to their homeland. After all, UN Resolution 194 had affirmed the refugees’ right of return under international law.

However, that right of return would not be honored by the occupiers. Not only that, a law by the new “state” was passed in 1950 to give the right for Jews and their spouses to come to Israel and acquire citizenship if they had one or more Jewish grandparent.

For Palestinians, they could not come back to their homeland. Anyone who tried also faced grave danger. Between 1949 and 1956 alone, Israeli soldiers shot several thousands of Palestinians who continued to try to cross the border back into their own country. However, some managed to be able to sneak in, raising the Palestinian Arab population by an increase of about 30% again in the early 1950s.

For those who had stayed in their homeland after the Nakba in ‘48, they were supposed to be treated as citizens with full rights. However, the Israeli imposed a military rule over Arabs, using discrimination to keep strict control over movement of people and organization, including striking down any efforts to resist repressive policies. Any independent collective action – public, social, or cultural – was banned.

Palestinian Arabs were also isolated in select villages and towns as the Israeli miliary aimed to take over more land. In 1959, some of the restrictions slightly lessened as the Zionist occupiers needed more workers they could cheaply pay, which required an increase in freedom of movement.

Arabs were treated as inferior, with limited rights. Israeli military permission was needed for anything from education to health care to commerce, and even marriage or divorce. Israel controlled their life with a strict occupation.

And for those in exile, refugee camps were difficult as well. As UNRWA notes: “The lives of the refugees were turned upside down; they were faced with disease, lack of food and water, life in unfamiliar places and overcrowding.”

Fighting for Liberation
Israeli Occupation Forces continued massacres of Palestinian Arabs in the country.

In 1953, for example, massacres included attacks on Qibya in the West Bank and al-Bureij refugee camp in Gaza – leaving over 100 Palestinian martyrs in the process.

Israeli soldiers would keep targeting these areas in the years that followed, like in 1956 when hundreds of Palestinians were martyred in Gaza during Israeli attacks in Khan Yunis and Rafah.

Organizations like the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) continued to provide assistance on certain levels – such as with shelter, food, medical aid, education, work programs, and more – but it didn’t change the fact that there was a military occupation.

In order to combat continued Israeli aggression, Palestinian armed resistance fighters – otherwise referred to as “fedayeen” at this time – formed paramilitary groups around the early 1950s to be able to defend their people and homeland.

This also evolved into a more formal Palestinian fighting organization that would be independent from Arab governments. Thus, Fatah was born in the late 1950s, its name an Arabic acronym in reverse for “Harakat al-tahrir al-watani al-Filastini” which translated to “The Palestinian National Liberation Movement” as part of its self-declared mission. Yasser Arafat was one of its founders. As The Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question notes:

“Fatah was the first national liberation movement since 1948 to be started by Palestinians themselves and that brought together Palestinian activists from different ideological and intellectual backgrounds. It called on all politically active Palestinians to abandon their party affiliations and to be united under its banner as a movement to ‘organize a vanguard that would rise above factionalism, whims and leanings to include the entire people.’

The Arab nationalist slogan prevalent at the time was ‘Arab unity is the path to the liberation of Palestine.’ Fatah reversed it, contending that ‘the liberation of Palestine is the road to Arab unity’; it acknowledged the pan-Arab dimension of the Palestinian cause but insisted that the Palestinian people had to rely on themselves in their struggle for liberation. For Fatah, the Palestinian revolution would be ‘Palestine in origin and (pan) Arab in its development.’

The movement's leadership saw armed struggle as its primary means of liberating Palestine. It modeled itself after the revolutionary struggles in Algeria, Cuba, and Vietnam.”

Cells of Fatah began to form in Gaza – but also in Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

At the same time, there was also an interest by others to create a Palestinian political entity. This came to fruition with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) after a Palestinian National Congress was called in June 1964.

The PLO was officially recognized at the second Arab summit that September, though with the explicit agreement they would not try to arm Palestinians in Jordan or attempt to gain sovereignty from Jordan in the West Bank.

“The establishment of the PLO prompted Fatah in particular to accelerate the consolidation of its presence on the ground, by establishing its military wing, al-Asifa (the Storm), and launching its first military operations in January 1965,” notes The Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question.

1968 Naksa
Since the Nakba in 1948, Israel had continued to fight against the neighboring Arab countries – especially since the West Bank was under Jordanian sovereignty and the Gaza strip under Egyptian sovereignty.

This included attacks against in Egypt in 1956 (with Britain and France as Israel’s allies) and diverting the Jordan River in 1963 (with Syria as Jordan’s ally).

In June 1967, Israel started a new stage by launching a surprise attack on Egypt. More attacks followed that were primarily against Jordan, Syria, as well as within Palestine.

In what is sometimes referred to as the Six-Day War, Israeli Occupation Forces took control of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. They also took control of the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria.

This became known as Al-Naksa, which translates to the setback.

The Naksa displaced another 300,000 Palestinians from their homes – including some who had already been expelled during the Nakba – bringing the total to over a million Palestinians driven out of their homes between 1948 and 1967.

The overwhelming majority of the newly displaced Palestinians sought refuge in Jordan. Many crossed into Jordan through the river, and did so on foot with very few belongings.

The size of land that now made up “Israel” had significantly grown and the entire historical Palestine territory had now been seized. On the eve of the initial June 5 attack, Israeli Labor minister Yigal Allon wrote: “We must avoid the historic mistake of the War of Independence (1948)… and must not cease fighting until we achieve total victory, the territorial fulfillment of the Land of Israel.”

Their intention was clear: to fully take control of all the land, so there could be no Arab sovereignty in any territory. The Zionist mission to establish a so-called “Jewish state” at the harm of the local Palestinian Arab population was in full force.

Immediately after, UN Resolution 242 called for a withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories occupied during this battle, among other requests.

Israel not only ignored the UN, but they actively encouraged and supported Zionist settlers to move into these areas, building homes on land they did not own. This went directly against international law.

They also illegally annexed East Jerusalem and different parts of the West Bank, which they self-deemed part of the “state of Israel” – which was not recognized as true by the internal community.

The feyadeen resistance fighters who had already formed became even more determined in armed struggle, feeling a heightened need to take Palestine back as there was insufficient help from the rest of the Arab world or extended international community.

As The Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question writes:

“The defeat brought about the realization that counting on the Arab regular armies was unrealistic and that the Arab governmental approach exemplified by the creation of a PLO of notables was unlikely to yield positive results. The Palestinian national struggle was liberated from the bonds of official Arab sponsorship.

The phenomenon of guerrilla action became widespread, and new Palestinian organizations were formed. The fierce resistance demonstrated by the Palestinian fighters and the relatively heavy losses suffered by the Israeli army in the Battle of al-Karama in March 1968 significantly boosted the movement, leading to the enrollment of thousands of Palestinian (and Arab) volunteers and setting the stage for the transfer of PLO leadership into the hands of the guerrilla organizations, especially the most powerful among them, Fatah.

This was achieved at the fourth session of the PNC, held in Cairo from 10 to 17 July 1968. There a new Palestine National Charter was approved, devoted to Palestinian nationalist (rather than pan-Arab) ideas. The fifth PNC session, held in Cairo in early February 1969, further solidified this trend with the election of Fatah leader Yasir Arafat as chairman of the PLO Executive Committee, a position he was to hold until his death in 2004.”

In addition to Fatah taking the lead of the PLO after the defeat in 1967, other factions also continued to pursue their efforts. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was also formally organized around this time and initially became a faction of the PLO in the late 1960s. The group itself split soon after, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) was born from the separation of members due to differences in strategy.

Amman’s Refugee Art Community
The 1967 events only further pushed artists to get more serious – both in Palestine and in neighboring countries – to make work about the Palestinian struggle.

Amman, Jordan – where many displaced from the Naksa fled – then also became a home and center for Palestinian artists in exile. It didn’t take long for there to be exhibitions with themes of liberation, appearing in Amman as soon as 1968.

Jordanian ceramist Mahmoud Taha said that "it was not possible to show artwork that had no connection to the movement.”

A 1969 exhibit in Amman, making the Battle of Al Karameh from the previous year, featured many types of art – children's drawings, photographs, paintings, sculptures, maps, prints, books, records, songs of the revolution, stamps, clothes, and more. It featured artists from all over the Arab world and other international countries.

Beirut and Amman both played important roles during this time for those displaced outside of the country.

In Palestine, with the homeland entirely taken over, there was one shift in particular that impacted artist relations. Those in Gaza and the West Bank and previously been unable to have contact with those in the territories taken over as part of the ‘47 UN Partition and ‘48 Nakba. However, once again, artists across all these areas were able to have communication, for the time being.

Palestine Film Unit
After establishing the Art Department of the PLO in 1965, there were more additions to come.

The Palestine Film Unit (PFU) came in 1967 to make films that took back the narrative into their own voice. The goal was to document the revolution and create a historical archive.

It was done in conjunction with Fatah, making it the first cinema unit working under a Palestinian military organization.

Leading this department were filmmakers Mustafa Abu Ali, Hani Jawharieh, and Sulafa Jadallah.

Mustafa Abu Ali had just graduated in 1967 after studying in the US and UK. He stated at the time that “the Palestinian resistance believes that action through cinema is a natural extension of armed action.”

Sulafa Jadallah had also studied, but closer to home. She was the first woman admitted to the Higher Institute of Cinema in Cairo, where she excelled. Jadallah is also referred to as the first female cinematographer in the Arab world in general.

Jadallah’s impact was significant, but her career was cut short in the middle of 1969 when she was unfortunately hit by friendly fire. She survived but was unfortunately paralyzed, never able to shoot a film again.

Hani Jawharieh was involved with both the Film Unit as well as the PLO Photography archive.

Samia Halaby writes about his role in her book, Liberation Art of Palestine:

“Jawharieh was the first photographer to accompany Palestinian freedom fighters to the Jordan River Valley during the late 60s.

In 1967 he created a film called Exodus (different from the American film of the same name), which told of the evictions of the Palestinians from their homes and lands during the war of that same year.

Many of the films, which he made in Jordan just before leaving to Beirut, document the destruction by Israel of agricultural lands in the Jordan Valley. These films were followed by a series of films and photographs documenting the life and struggle of the Palestinian refugee.”

In 1970, filmmaker Jean Luc-Godard – a pioneer of the French New Wave movement – traveled to Amman, Jordan to spend time with their team at Palestinian refugee camps. While there, he and colleague Jean-Pierre Gorin also captured footage that was supposed to be a film about feyadeen.

However, Black September – otherwise known as the Jordanian Civil War between Jordan and the PLO – led to mass casualties. This included many of the fighters who had been the focus of Godard’s documentary, and he ultimately abandoned the project. (The footage was later re-purposed in his experimental film Ici et ailleurs, or Here and Elsewhere.)

With the Film Unit, “After the horrific events of Black September, Mustafa Abu Ali, along with the rest of the PLO left Jordan and went to Beirut. Hani Jawharia and Sulafa Jadallah were (at the time) unable to get out of Jordan,” wrote Emily Jacir in a later article for The Electronic Intifada.