Mousa Alami, a leading Palestinian nationalist, intellectual, and notable born in Jerusalem , wrote an article in 1949 analysing the Nakba . It was published in the Middle Eastern Journal in Arabic which has been translated into English, titled “The Loss of Palestine”, and was published in book form in Beirut in .
It is clear from the article that in Alami’s view the “Nakba”, or “disaster” occurred because the Arabs had entered into a war with the Jews when they were not fully prepared rather than pausing and perfecting their preparedness such that they would have won militarily and destroyed Israel.
He wrote “The disaster was not inevitable. During the course of the struggle we had opportunity to finish with Zionism and its dangers… ”
He wrote the first phase of the war was from after the UN adopted the Partition plan until 1948, (the date of the invasion by Arab states).
In analyzing the war’s outcome, he indicates that the Jews were “with a unified organization, a unified command and total conscription” which included “all their girls ” whereas “We worked on a local basis”, “without unity”, “without a general command”, “ every town fighting on its own.” Also, he wrote the Jews worked to smuggle in quality arms, which the Arabs knew about but they did not do the same. In his estimation “there was a slackness” on the Arab side.
He writes “the initiative was with the Arabs”, but and asks was “it better to accept the struggle and go ahead with it or should we have paused and perfected our preparations ? Did the political situation really demand immediate hostilities before we were ready?” This appears to be direct criticism of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini the leader of the Palestinians who thrust them into war as soon as the UN announced its partition plan.
As Alami wrote, “If ultimately the Palestinians evacuated their country, it was not out of cowardice, but because they had lost all confidence in the existing system of defense…They were told that the Arab armies were coming and everything would return to normal and they placed their confidence and hopes in that.” He concludes, “Thus the country fell town after town, village after village, position after position, as a result of its fragmentation and disunity.”
He says the first phase of the war was between the announcement of the partition plan on , 1947 and , 1948 , the date of the Arab invasion. Tellingly he points out that in this first phase, “the war in Palestine involved only part of the of the country, not all of it. The brunt was born by those adjacent to the Jews, while those who were distant remained distant, unless the war approached them; They followed its news and developments with concern, but as through the problem did not concern them, or the result affect them.” This sentence arguably suggests that Palestinians did not identify with their nationalistic cause at the time as much as the Jews did with theirs.
Regarding the 2nd phase of the war, , 1948 to 1949, Alami notes that similar factors present in the first phase of the war existed, indicating “our forces weee disunited in the face of the enemy, our fronts independent of each other.”
In the article, Alami also outlines what will be necessary in his view to occur on the Arab side in order to recover Palestine-making it clear he agrees with the objective to snuff out the Jewish state, but the Mufti had launched war too soon.
Interestingly, Alami himself had a role assisting Zionism. He sold land he owned in the Beit Shean Valley to Jews in 1937, and this land was used to found the first religious kibbutz in Israel, Tirat Tzvi.
Later, in 1944-1945, Alami urged the Arab League to create a “pan-Arab national fund” similar to the Jewish National Fund. Its specific purpose would be to acquire Arab land that was at the risk of being sold legally to Zionist organizations due to poor economic conditions of some Palestinian villagers. But Alami’s plan did not materialize.
There is a chapter about thr meaning of the word Nakba in the book Bryan Schwartz and I co-wrote entitled The Canadian Museum for Human Rights and Its “Nakba” Exhibit: Bias and Animus in Process and Outcome and the Nature and Impact of the New Antisemitism in Canada The book can be read as an e-book or in a few days as a hardcopy from amazon:
Anyone who wants to obtain the e-book version (to read on their electronic device) can download it immediately at amazon.ca
Anyone who hants a hardcopy version can order it from the same site – it takes a a few days to be printed-on -demand and delivered to the reader’s door, but the hardcopy versions should be of professional quality
‘The PDF version of the book for free can be read here:
