Special report: Palestine-Israel Relations
by Saud Abu Ramadan
GAZA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- 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.
