Palestinians hold a flag during a demonstration marking the anniversary of the Nakba, on the ruins of a destroyed village in what is now Israel. (Charlotte de Bellabre, Maan Images)

Coming to terms with one's own history is often difficult. For a state this process is even harder. During this month the State of Israel celebrates its 60th year. For Palestinians, however, this is not a time of celebration but rather a period of mourning for their tragedy in 1948.

On May 15, Jewish communities will hold many celebrations while Palestinian communities will be holding vigils just across the street. To this day these dual narratives have not been reconciled and this failure lies at the very foundation of the saddening conflict we have today.

Walking through Israel today you can still see many signs that a different people once inhabited the land. Open fields filled with stones and boulders mark the areas where Palestinian villages once stood. Ordered formations of cacti still stand where Palestinian farmers demarcated the edges of their farming land.

Even the names of some Palestinian villages have been changed Hebraicized into the names of Israeli cities or towns - Al-Yibna became Yavne, Al-Dayshum became Dishon.

Israeli historians have debated whether the 700,000-800,000 Arabs who were living in Palestine before the war of 1948 left voluntarily or through systematic depopulation.

What is not disputed, however, is that the inhabitants were not permitted to return to their homes and villages after the war and, in their place, Israel absorbed 1 million Jewish immigrants, more than doubling the population of the state in a single year.

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Many of these immigrants moved into homes built, owned and previously occupied by Arabs who are now refugees unable to return.

After the war, the State of Israel was constituted as a nearly homogeneous Jewish territorial entity. Yet the public consciousness of what led to this reality, in both the United States and Israel, is minimal.

Many still believe that the State of Israel was created on a barren land. Some Israeli historians have made use of newly opened military archives to detail an account of the war in 1948 that differs from the traditional state narrative.

Still these voices have had little effect. The people of Yavne and Dishon, like the people of Manhattan or Chicago, are rarely conscious of where the names of their cities came from, let alone know anything about the previous inhabitants.

To read the full article please visit The Boston Globe.