From the Nakba throughout the 1950s and the rise of Arab nationalism through the figurehead of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser, Palestinians on both sides of the border held on to the hope of an Arab liberation of Palestine. Struggle was expressed through leftist and nationalist movements of the countries in which they found exile, or in the case of the Palestinians inside the 1948 borders, in the form of the Communist Party, the only political party which remained for them.

However, in the first years, it must not be forgotten that the primary struggle for the Palestinian people was quite literally to survive. Whether destitute in Beirut, Amman, East Jerusalem, or the villages of the Galilee, the majority of people had lost everything. Even finding enough to eat for the family was a struggle as land, and all the employment that goes with it, had literally been torn out from under people (link to Land Section 1948-1967). Whether living under Israeli rule in the newly occupied land or living in refugee camps and cities under Arab rule, Palestinians faced poverty, unemployment, and lack of security from all sides. The struggle was a matter of staying alive.

A former resident of Ma`lul, speaking on film (Ma`lul Celebrates its Destruction, 1985, Belgium/Palestine) to director Michel Khleifi, recalls the early days.

At night, we’d creep back to retrieve what we could find. One night I wanted to get some sugar from our stock. When I saw the ruins of the house I went mad … I was terrified …. The livestock was starving. We’d had the habit of keeping stocks of things … but the store was empty: lentils, wheat, hay. We had really thought that we would be back after the occupation and the end of the hostilities.

Many people ask why the Palestinians who remained inside Palestine did not keep fighting—even a basic understanding of the dangers and restrictions that they faced from the overwhelming power of the Israeli state gives the answer. Military regulations covered every aspect of life: travel, property, public speech, media, use of land, and so on. Many depopulated villages were declared military zones under emergency regulations so that no one could enter them. Arabs were divided into three regions and military governors were appointed for the Galilee, the Triangle, and the south, the Negev.

Nahida Zahran, an internal refugee from Kafr Bir‘im, tells the story of her father’s resistance to security police pressure.

My father was persistently asked by the Shabak to work with them but he refused. He needed to work outside in order to make money, but he needed to have a permit to do this. They asked him where he was from and he would say ‘I am from Bir‘im.’ They told him if he said he was from Jish [shelter village] they would give him a permit, but he refused.

Resistance such as this formed the very essence of the struggle for the powerless people remaining inside their conquered land.

Some Palestinian citizens of Israel tried to use their supposed status as citizens to take their struggle through the Israeli courts. However, this was largely unsuccessful, proving from the beginning that Israel is a state for one people only. Groups of internal refugees tried to present their case legally before the authorities. An appeal to the High Court of Justice was made by 86 villagers with Israeli identity papers stating Saffuriyya as their place of residence, but in November 1951, the plea was rejected. The minister of defense and the military governor of the northern district were required to state why the petitioners were not allowed home. The High Court accepted the argument that Saffuriyya was within a “closed military zone,” (despite the fact that the Jewish settlement of Tzipori was established on village land in 1949).

It is important to see that, at this stage, internal refugees were not calling openly for the “right to return” for all refugees, both internal and external. Fear and the shattering of community frameworks by the Nakba made such action impossible, so the focus was on individual villages.

People left behind were largely peasants and farmers with little experience of political engagement. The climate of fear prevented development of significant political movement under the military regime. “Anyone who was just listening to the speeches of Abdul Nasser on the radio was informed on. The Israelis would send for you.” Fear of collaborators and informers successfully stifled secret political activity. “The atmosphere was ‘Don’t talk about Saffuriyya, forget about Saffuriyya, forget your demands,’ says Abu Arab, chair of both the Saffuriyya Heritage Committee and ADRID, the committee today representing all those internally displaced.

In October 1956, on the eve of the Suez War, the army imposed a last-minute nightfall curfew on the village of Kafr Qassem, close to the border with the West Bank. As workers in the field returned late, unaware of the curfew, 47 were shot and killed. While the government publicly claimed this was an isolated event by renegade officers, Palestinians were brutally reminded of their dispensable status in the eyes of the government.

The only political party that had survived the Nakba was the Communist Party. Some Arab communist activists had remained and the existence of Jewish Communists and links with the Soviet Union made it hard for the Israelis to ban Arab activity within the party. Some protest did emerge, such as widespread anger in the year following the killings of farm workers breaking an unknown curfew in Kafr Qassem in 1956, but it was sufficiently muted. On May Day 1958, for example, a decade after the establishment of the state of Israel, Arab communists were refused the timing for the parade that they were always permitted to hold in Nazareth. Organizers decided to go ahead with the demonstration at the time planned and large clashes with the police emerged. A few days later, clashes with Israeli security forces also emerged in the town of Umm Al-Fahem. Over the two incidents, hundreds of Arabs were injured and many jailed for extensive periods.

During the first two decades, a combination of fear and the brutal hand of the military regime successfully prevented the emergence of any Arab leadership of the minority remaining and only a few strikes and demonstrations could be held. Arabs could not unite to act through Labor organizations as initially they were banned from joining the pre-state Jewish Union, which became the Israeli Histadrut. Palestinian unions had been destroyed in the Nakba. Small parties or movements were initiated but either collapsed or the meetings were declared illegal by the authorities. During this time, the most noted group to develop was called Al-Ard (The Land), but the Israelis used every law and violent means to prevent its emergence into a widespread protest movement.

By far the largest numbers of Palestinians in the years following the Nakba were living in the major cities or refugee camps of the neighboring Arab states. Like the Palestinians remaining in the area conquered by Israel listening to Nasser on their radios, initially, the hopes of liberation lay with the Arab governments themselves. With the Egyptian revolution of 1952 overthrowing the monarchy and the British influence, the coming to power of Nasser seemed to promise much for the dispossessed Palestinians. It is difficult to imagine now, after so many years of prolonged conflict, but in the early 1950s, the extent of Israeli power was not fully understood and many believed that an organized united Arab force could defeat the newcomers and destroy a state build on the power of European Zionists.

Although refugees were living in appalling conditions, made worse by the laws and discrimination found in host Arab countries, many believed that the regimes would fight for their right to return. Thus Palestinians saw at this time that the way to forward the struggle was through joining Arab political movements, and this they did swelling the ranks of Arab left and right, Marxist, internationalist, pan-Arabist and Nasserist forces. At this time, it was politically expedient for all groups and regimes from left to right to claim legitimacy through their pioneering of the Palestinian cause.

Israel continued to claim that there was no independent Palestinian identity separate from an Arab identity, and that it was Arab politicians cynically manipulating Palestinians to talk about the right of return. However, a look at the actual situation demonstrates this as a lie. Journalists and historians note to the contrary that immediately following the Nakba, the Palestinians were leaderless, and it was popular movements among people in the camps which clung so steadfastly to the notion of return to their own land of Palestine. This belief that the return was imminent was so adhered to, that in the first decade people did not want to make any improvements to housing and camps in case it sent signals to the world that they were prepared to settle where they were.