Within hours after the Israeli Supreme Court dismissed a petition from the residents of Rafah refugee camp asking for a halt to the home demolitions that have left thousands of Palestinians homeless this month, the streets leading out of Rafah were jammed with cars and carts piled with the belongings of camp inhabitants seeking refuge ahead of the IDF’s largest offensive against Gaza in decades. The procession coincided with the 56th commemoration of Al-Nakba (the catastrophe), the term used to describe the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their cities and villages in what is now Israel. Many of the Rafah’s inhabitants are descended from the refugees of Jaffa, a city that was left with a few thousand of its inhabitants after weeks of bombardment by Zionist paramilitaries—the precursors of the IDF—led the majority of its residents to flee in early May 1948.

Some were eventually settled in Rafah refugee camp, established by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in 1949. Others took refuge in the Palestinian towns of Lydde and Ramle, but it was not long before the Israeli Defense Forces launched an aerial and ground attack on the two towns in July 1948. Codenamed “Operation Dani”, the Israeli Air Force bombarded Lydde and Ramle before Lieutenant Colonel Yitzhak Rabin commanded his troops into the towns.

Within a day after entering the towns, Yitzhak Rabin and General Yigal Allon met with Israel’s Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, to whom Allon posed the question: “What shall we do with the Arabs?” Ben Gurion—who was fond of boasting that “we did not expel a single Arab”— responded: “Expel them.” On July 12, 1948, Yitzhak Rabin signed an order to the IDF brigades in Lydde and Ramle: “… The inhabitants of Lydda [a similar order was directed at Ramle] must be expelled quickly without attention to age…implement immediately.”  Ramle’s inhabitants were ordered onto trucks and buses and driven to the border of the area under Israeli control, then made to walk. The residents of Lydda were ordered to march from their town, towards the east. Shmarya Guttman, an intelligence officer with the IDF, watched as the Palestinians passed to exile: “Women walked burdened with packages and sacks on their heads”, he later recounted in his memoir. “Mothers dragged children after them…occasionally, you encountered a piercing look from one of the youngsters…in the column, and the look said: ‘We have not yet surrendered. We shall return to fight you.’”  (In Benny Morris, The Birth of the Refugee Problem, Cambridge 1987, pp 203-210).

What would George Bush have said, in response to these defiant children? Last month, the President set in writing his assurance to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that the United States, which in 1948-49 had lobbied for the return of the refugees to their lands, now recognizes that the refugees cannot, in all justice and fairness, be allowed their right to return to the lands they were expelled from. Did Bush watch the images of Rafah’s refugees, elderly and children, fleeing in anticipation of the US made bulldozers and helicopters that have visited so much misery on the Palestinians of Gaza? Did he see the looks on these children’s faces, as they lived the memories of their parents and grandparents?

As condemnations of Israel’s actions in Rafah poured in from around the world, George Bush received several ovations—at one point the audience sadistically chanted “four more years”— at the annual AIPAC conference in Washington. What is happening in Rafah is “troubling”, said Bush. His compassion ended there—the fault lies squarely on the Palestinians, who have not done enough to enough to fight terrorism. Israel has a right to defend itself, and “Israel has defended itself with skill and heroism”, and, he might have added, with American armaments.  For someone who exudes enthusiasm over Donald Rumsfeld’s “strong leadership” in Iraq, Bush probably does not pay much attention to Amnesty International reports, like the one that happened to coincide with Israel’s attack on Rafah, and which accused Israel of conducting “war crimes” and “collective punishment” over the past four years.

Bush pledged his support for Israel during his speech to AIPAC. Israel can expect further shipments of bulldozers, like the one that killed Rachel Corrie, who had come from Olympia Washington, as she stood between it and a Palestinian home in Rafah that was slated for demolition. He understands—so he told the audience—that “security is the foundation of peace”. Not security for the refugees, or the Palestinians of Gaza who can look forward to residing in the world’s most ambitious prison once Israel “disengages” from Gaza. A visionary, who likes to startle his guests by announcing that he receives divine visitations, Bush sees progress amidst the rubble in Rafah and the despair in the occupied territories, whose inhabitants must provide security to Israel in order for this most contemptuous and cynical “peace” to take root.

In eight years—should he be appointed again—George Bush will see to it that Israel receives all the armaments, and zealous diplomatic and financial support it needs, to bully the Palestinians into “peace”. But he would do well to read the diary of Shmarya Guttman;  there is no amount of bulldozers—or speeches calling for further cravenness from the Palestinian leadership—that measures even a hair’s breadth in comparison to what  those children’s piercing looks said 56 years ago. 

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