As Israel celebrates 60 years of statehood this May, Palestinians worldwide mourn the loss of their homes and homeland. Because while one people - Jews fleeing persecution in Christian Europe - gained a country, another people - the land's indigenous Palestinians - lost nearly everything they had. In 1948 hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were exiled and replaced by new Jewish immigrants. [Read the full article] This article was originally published by The Eugene Register-Guard and is republished with the authors' permission.

Palestinian fisherman approach the Gaza port aboard boats powered by cooking gas instead of regular fuel, after Israel cut fuel supplies to the territory. (Wissam Nassar, Maan Images)

As Israel celebrates 60 years of statehood this May, Palestinians worldwide mourn the loss of their homes and homeland. Because while one people - Jews fleeing persecution in Christian Europe - gained a country, another people - the land's indigenous Palestinians - lost nearly everything they had. Rabbi Maurice Harris presented one perspective on this story ("A place to call home," Commentary, May 4), and we would like to offer another.

In 1948 hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were exiled and replaced by new Jewish immigrants. This tragedy still shapes the conflict between our two peoples. Palestinians live without freedom and equal rights in the land of their ancestors, or as refugees scattered throughout the world. Israelis live as occupiers of another people - plagued with a sense of insecurity, though they possess one of the world's strongest militaries. This side of Israel's establishment and its inescapable connection to our current strife has been overlooked in the anniversary celebrations.

Some Israelis believe reconciliation with Palestinians is possible by forgetting this past. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni recently asked that upon the establishment of a Palestinian state, "the word 'Nakba' (which refers to the expulsion of the Palestinians by Jewish militias in 1948) be deleted from the Arabic lexicon." Imagine asking Americans to excise Sept. 11, 2001, from their collective memory, or Jewish people to forget the Holocaust. It is precisely "not forgetting" that allows us to build a just future.

That is why we - an Israeli Jew who as a child unwittingly played among the ruins of Qaqun, a destroyed Palestinian village in what is now Israel, and a Palestinian whose family in Hebron welcomed destitute Jewish refugees who had fled their homes in fear - choose to work together to raise awareness of the Nakba. We know that our two peoples are destined to live together, that our fates are intertwined. And we know that only by acknowledging injustice can we overcome it.

The Nakba - Arabic for "catastrophe" - is the defining Palestinian experience. In 1948, Zionist leaders knew that a predominantly Jewish state could not be established peacefully in Palestine. Israel's first president, Moshe Sharett, said, "We have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it." Jews then owned less than 6 percent of the land, and Jewish immigrants were a third of the Palestine population. Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, said they would conquer the country through "terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting of all social services." And they did.

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Ben Gurion was a principal architect of Plan Dalet - a plan to drive hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and land that Jewish leaders wanted for the state of Israel. More than 250,000 Palestinians were expelled in the period from Plan Dalet's adoption in March 1948 to May 14, when Israel declared independence and Arab states intervened with too little too late.

By December of 1948, Palestinian society was nearly destroyed. More than 700,000 Palestinians - two-thirds of their population - had been exiled. More than half fled under direct military assault from Zionist forces. Others fled in fear as news of massacres spread.

Israeli historians have documented 34 massacres of Palestinians by Zionist forces. Most notorious were Saliha (70 to 80 killed), Deir Yassin (100 to 110), Lod (250) and Dawayima, where a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved. No one was punished for these murders. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter and covered up for the officers involved.

The expulsions continued after the 1948 war. In 1950 Israeli troops drove Palestinians out of the village of al-Majdal. Altogether, Jewish forces depopulated more than 500 Palestinian communities and demolished most of them. In those that remained, Palestinian property was given to new Jewish immigrants. Many Israelis were raised in the homes of Palestinians. Their children climbed trees Palestinians had planted, slept in their beds and ate at their kitchen tables.

Sixty years later, the Nakba grinds on for Palestinians - whether they are Palestinian-Americans in Oregon unable to return to the homes taken from their families, Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, or Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Palestinian refugees and their descendants today number approximately 7 million. All refugees have an internationally recognized right to return to their homes, receive compensation for damages, and/or receive support for voluntarily settling elsewhere. This right is enshrined for Palestinians in United Nations Resolution 194 of 1948. These refugee rights have been affirmed in numerous recent peace agreements in Cambodia, Rwanda, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Guatemala, Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Burundi and Darfur.

In the West Bank, some 2.5 million Palestinians have lived under Israeli military occupation for more than 40 years. Their land continues to be confiscated for Israel's ever-expanding Jewish settlements, which are forbidden under international law and have been opposed by all American administrations. Yet they are growing three times faster than the population inside Israel itself.

Occupied Palestine suffers under severe apartheid. The two populations - both living under Israeli rule - are governed by two sets of laws. Jewish settlers travel freely on modern, well-lit highways built for their use, while Palestinians use separate roads and wait hours at the more than 500 Israeli roadblocks. Palestinians must ration water, while Jewish settlers enjoy lavish green lawns and swimming pools.

Inside Israel itself, nearly 20 percent of citizens are Palestinians who, along with their descendants, managed to remain despite the Nakba. They also face discrimination. More than 20 Israeli laws grant privileges to Jews over non-Jews. Israeli law grants automatic citizenship to any Jew arriving from anywhere in the world. But Palestinian refugees still carrying keys to their homes and deeds to their property cannot return. The right to a home and property is given or denied based solely on religion.

Marriage laws are similar. Palestinian citizens of Israel who marry Palestinians from the Occupied Territories are prevented from moving their spouses to Israel. Jewish Israelis, however, are allowed to marry Jews from anywhere in the world who receive automatic Israeli citizenship.

Palestinian citizens of Israel are prohibited from buying land controlled by the Jewish National Fund and the Israel Lands Authority, roughly 94 percent of the state of Israel. And while more than 600 new Jewish settlements have been established inside Israel since 1948, no new Arab town or village has been allowed. And Israel refuses to recognize dozens of Arab villages. Tens of thousands of villagers in unrecognized villages have no access to water, electricity or other government services.

Roughly equal numbers of Jews and Palestinians inhabit the Holy Land today, but with enormously unequal rights. And despite its nuclear arsenal, Israel cannot hope to remain a colonizer and achieve security for its people. If we are ever to live peacefully and securely, Israel must acknowledge the injustice done to the Palestinian people and grant Palestinians their rights: the right to return for refugees, freedom for those under occupation, and full equality with Jewish citizens for Palestinian Israelis. Jewish Israelis will be able to stop living as occupiers and instead live as equals with Palestinians only when they acknowledge the Nakba and their obligation to make restitution.

Current U.S. policy - which gives unquestioned financial and diplomatic support to Israel even as it expands settlements and pursues policies that violate American values - will not bring peace and security to the region. American policymakers can facilitate a more peaceful world by supporting instead the efforts of Palestinians and Israelis committed to working together for a solution based on justice and equality regardless of race or religion.