From Nakba to Waksa and Back Again

An interesting commentary in todays Yediot by Roni Shaked claims that the Palestinians have begun referring to their current situation as the “waksa” (or “vaksa”, hard to tell in Hebrew transliteration) as opposed to the famous “nakba” and the slightly less celebrated “naksa”, which refers to their defeat in the Six Day War. Apparently, “waksa” is different from a “nakba” or “naksa” in that it is a self-inflicted catastrophe as opposed to one caused by outside enemies. The article goes on to note the widely known events which precipitated the “waksa”: the disastrous second intifada, the death of Arafat, the rise of Hamas and the ultimate division of Gaza and the West Bank into two separate territories governed by two separate ideologies, one nationalist the other Islamist.