During the First Intifada uprising of 1987, the Israeli military carried out what the residents of my refugee camp in Gaza referred to as the “Eid Massacre”. The killing of four young people in the camp, including my childhood friend Raed Munis, took place on the first day of the Muslim holiday.
Once the young men were buried and as we mourned in our humble refugee home, my father fiddled hopelessly with the radio, trying to find any news broadcast, anywhere, that reported on the terrible events that took place in our camp on that day. No one did. It was then that I realised that the story of my neighbourhood needed to be told. With time, I also understood that my refugee camp was a microcosm of a larger phenomenon in which the Palestinian discourse is purposely marginalised and Palestinian voices are deliberately muted.
For nearly 25 years, I have undertaken a journey to reclaim the narrative of Palestine, on behalf of my neighbours, my friends and my people.
My recently published book, The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story, is my latest volume that aims to provide a collective articulation of the Palestinian struggle, centred around the Nakba – the destruction of the Palestinian homeland in 1948 – and the millions of refugees that continue to live in exile since then.
One of the stories in the book is that of Ahmad Al-Haaj, an ageing communist living in Gaza. He escaped Palestine in 1948, when his village Al-Sawafir was attacked and then set ablaze by invading Jewish militias. These militias later became the Israeli army. To this day, Al-Haaj, 85, refuses to build a house in the besieged Gaza Strip.
I spoke to Al-Haaj as I conducted a series of interviews with Palestinian refugees in Palestine, the Middle East and around the world to try and understand what compels them to revere their “right of return” to their homes from which they, or their ancestors, were expelled 70 years ago.
Al-Haaj does not own a home in Gaza, because he fears that the moment he does he will resign himself to his exile. For him it is an emotional burden that he simply cannot afford to take on. He spent many years in an Israeli prison for his refusal to accept banishment to Gaza.
Throughout his life, Al-Haaj often thought of Al-Sawafir and told his family stories to anyone willing to listen: their happy lives before exile; the pain and loss after. The same sentiment echoes amongst many Palestinians, even those who were born after the Nakba.
I spoke to young people who feel so deeply connected to villages which all vanished long before they were born.
The Nakba – which in Arabic means “the catastrophe” – is not a mere date to be commemorated every 15 May; it is far more encompassing than a single event, however tragic. It represents the life that millions of Palestinians were unfairly denied; every day since has been a life of destitution, exile and want.
The Nakba, in some way, has thus become part of the collective identity for all Palestinians. It is now so ingrained into the consciousness of all Palestinians that it would be impossible to imagine a truly peaceful future without justly and carefully addressing that original crime.
Although I was born and raised in a Gaza refugee camp and then moved to the United States, strongly relating to a village that was erased from the map decades earlier is not, for me, an irrational act. My village of Beit Daras remains the single most important piece of earth that truly matters to me.
As a child, I learned from my grandfather to be proud: he was a handsome and strong peasant, with an unshakable faith. He managed to hide his deep sadness so well after he was expelled from his home in Palestine, along with his entire family. As he aged, he would sit for hours, between prayers, searching within his soul for the beautiful memories of his past. Occasionally, he would let out a mournful sigh, a few tears; yet, he never accepted his defeat, or the idea that Beit Daras was forever gone.
My political consciousness developed as a result of the misery of the refugee camps, the determination to redeem the painful past, which saw the demise of my village, and the perpetual destitution of my family. My parents and grandparents, along with siblings, friends, classmates and neighbours are all buried in the refugee camp. My father died under siege in Gaza and neither Israel nor Egypt allowed me to see him for a final goodbye. Our Nakba is ongoing.
Seventy years after the Nakba, the battlefield is still there, delineated most starkly at the Gaza border where tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees continue to rally, holding their Great Return March, starting 30 March and ending on Tuesday, 15 May.
The writer is the editor of, Palestine Chronicle