The Jerusalem Fund held the Palestine Center Annual Conference titled ‘75 Years of Partition: Ethnic Cleansing and Dispossession’ on November 11, 2022.
This year’s conference, and the month of November, mark both 105 years since the Balfour Declaration and 75 years since the UN Partition of Palestine, thus our conference title, “75 years of Partition, Dispossession and Ethnic Cleansing.” On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly proposed and adopted UN Resolution 181 – what was to become known as the UN Partition Plan for Palestine. The Plan recommended a partition of Mandatory Palestine at the end of the British Mandate. The Declaration and Partition Plan signed away the fate of a sovereign land and an entire people to a Zionist settler-colonial project – a project that emerged as the state of Israel, forcibly displacing and ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people – which continues today.
In 1948, David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, said, “We must do everything to ensure they (the Palestinians) never do return…the old will die, and the young will forget.” Our conference today and the events that came before and that are planned are a testament that this is far from reality. A few weeks ago, we hosted some of the authors and editors of Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire. One of the most significant issues within this important anthology was Palestinian refugees – a classification and status that continues today because of the Partition Plan. The anthology challenged readers to go beyond the permission to narrate in that knowledge requires responsibility. This year’s conference included a keynote address and three panels; 1. Ethnic Cleansing, 2. Human Rights, and 3. Analysis and Action that were thought-provoking and culminated in proposed concrete actions to take forward presentation findings.
Below are the recordings of the conference.
