by Saud Abu Ramadan
Ailing 87-year-old Abu Mohammed Abu Assi, a Palestinian
refugee from al-Shatee (Beach) Refugee camp in western
Gaza City, has made his will, leaving his only property and
a key of return to his grandsons.
"The key symbolizes the right of return for them and for
all refugees worldwide," said frail Abu Assi, who is originally
from Hamama, a village near Gaza and now inhabited by Jews.
On Thursday, Palestinians commemorate their Nakba, or
catastrophe in Arabic language, as Israelis mark the 60th
anniversary of the creation of a statehood.
"We should pass the torch from one generation to the next,"
Abu Assi said, adding "I hope I could leave them wealth and
money, but my wealth has been stolen by the Jews and my
sons and grandsons have to retrieve it."
Abu Assi used to own large tracts of olive, citrus and fruit gardens.
He was one of the most well-known and richest men in his village,
but all of a sudden things had totally changed.
He recollects how the fight between the Jews and the Palestinians
started. "The fight initiated on April 18, 1948. Palestinian Tiberius
was captured by Menachem Begin's Irgun militant group,"
he recalled painfully.
"Then Jaffa and Haifa completely surrendered to the well-equipped
Jewish militants. A day later Israel was created on the rubble of
Palestine," Abu Assi said with sobbing voice that can hardly speak up.
At that time, more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced into
exile by Israeli troops. Now the number of Palestinian refugees all
over the world has outnumbered millions.
According to Palestinian official statistics, the number of
Palestinians in the Diaspora is estimated currently to be
about 5.1 million.
Palestinian refugees are mainly in Jordan (about 3 millions),
1.6 million are distributed on other Arab countries and the
rest are in Western countries including Europe, the U.S. and
Latin America, according to the same sources.
Following the flee of the Palestinian refugees from their home
towns and villages, the Untied Nations issued resolutions that
all Palestinian refugees have the right to return to areas from
which they have fled or were forced to leave, and to either
regain their properties or receive compensation and support
for voluntary resettlement.
However, Israel still denies the Palestinians all these rights.
Osama Abu Nahel, a Palestinian refugee but also an expert of
political sciences and history, said the world should understand
that the cause of refugees is not only a political dilemma.
"The whole country was taken. It's not an economic problem.
It's not a refugee problem. It's a problem of national and
cultural existence. The Nakba was intended to uproot and
completely demolish Palestinian nationhood," he said.
Abu Nahel explains that Israel depopulated more than 450
Palestinian towns and villages, destroying most while resettling
the remainder with new Jewish immigrants with no regard to
Palestinian rights and desires to return to their homes.
For the third-generation of Palestinian refugees, the Nakba has
become different in terms of the pain and suffering the first and
second generations had experienced.
The 26-years-old grandson of Abu Assi, Amjad, said he is totally
aware of the great loss that his grandparents and parents
experienced when they fled from their homeland in 1948.
"I know how overwhelming it is to lose the place that gives you
all the feelings of security, and the identity that tells who you
really are," he said.
"My ancestors underwent through very critical conditions. They
have a dream to return and they passed it to us and we won't
give this dream up."
Amjad believes that his grandparents and their generations are
so lucky because they have their own stories about their shared
memories to tell, even if about a painful escape from their home.
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