"The UN’s Partition Plan for Palestine was never fully realized. The proposal was adopted by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947 as Resolution 181, but no Arab states were established in accordance with the Plan in 1948, as the article suggests."
August 11, 2023
To:
Josef Federman, News Director, Associated Press
Edith M. Lederer, Journalist, The Associated Press
Aileen Donnelly, News Editor, The National Post
Dear Mr. Federman, Ms. Lederer, and Ms. Donnelly,
I’m writing to you on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME, https://www.cjpme.org) regarding a factual error in the Associated Press article “Fighting has left half of Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp 'a hot area,' UN says,” which was published on the National Post website on August 10, 2023.
1.
The article states:
“[Dorothee Klaus, Director of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon] said the violence ‘needs to be understood in the context of multiple displacements’ Palestinian refugees have experienced over the past 75 years in Lebanon. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled from what is now Israel following the U.N.’s partition of British-ruled Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states in 1948.”
However, the UN’s Partition Plan for Palestine was never fully realized. The proposal was adopted by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947 as Resolution 181, but no Arab states were established in accordance with the Plan in 1948, as the article suggests.
I urge the Associated Press and National Post to ensure that this factual error is promptly corrected. The text can read:
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their land in an event known as the Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, during the creation of Israel in 1948.
2.
While I appreciate you mentioning the departure of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land, the vast majority of them did not flee, but were forcibly expelled. During the Nakba, thousands of Palestinian civilians, including women and children, were massacred by Zionist militias such as the Irgun and Lehi, the most well-known massacre being at Deir Yassin.[1] It is in this sense that Palestinians did not merely flee, but were forcibly displaced by the violent actions of Zionist militias. Following their expulsion, Israel quickly expropriated their land and property, which was done through legislation such as the Absentee Property Law of 1950, and barred the refugees from ever returning to their homes.
I urge you to include this essential additional context when you make your correction.
With all of that being said, I was glad to see that you tried to add context to your article and mention the origins of these refugees and where they came from in the first place.
Should you wish, you can contact me at 438-380-5410 for more information.
Sincerely,
Mohamed Khalaf
Director of Strategic Operations,
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
[1] “Israel: Documents detail 1948 Nakba massacres of Palestinians,” Middle East Eye, December 10, 2021, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-documents-detail-massacres-nakba.