A symposium on the Palestinian catastrophe, held at the Great Hall at the University of Sydney on September 5, was attended by many Labor and Green MPs, left parties, groups supporting Palestinian rights as well as Arab community members.
Twenty years ago, prominent Palestinian writer Dr Hanan Ashrawi, who had been awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, was prevented from giving a speech in the same venue. So there was a sense that things had progressed.
Former Labor Foreign Minister Bob Carr started with a factual description of Israel as an occupying force, a racist Apartheid state and its presence in Palestine being illegal. He then said that what had happened to Palestinians in 1967 was a disaster and that recognition of Palestine was “taken for granted” by Labor.
While the symposium ad described the Palestinian Catastrophe as referring to “the devastation of the Palestinian homeland in 1949, and with it the displacement of the majority of Palestinian Arabs,” Carr recast it as the “setback of the 1967 war”.
This slight-of-hand angered many in the audience, including many of his supporters. The Nakba is, for Palestinians, the greatest catastrophe and no one should accept its belittling.
Many Labor leaders say they recognise Palestine. But this does not mean they recognise Palestine as an independent state, only that they recognise the existence of Palestinian lands.
Read the article by Khaled Ghannam in Green Left.