While the eighty-year-old Um Khaled Khadish lives, presenting the painful Nakba in the Balata refugee camp east of Nablus, she looks back to the sad past to evoke the facts of her and her family’s displacement from their village of Ijzim (south of Haifa), to remain a witness to the events of her bereaved land, and to await the realization of her dreams, to return to her stolen home. And meeting her son Khaled, who has been absent from the occupation prisons for more than two decades.

Umm Khaled used to sit on the doorstep of her house every day, wearing the keffiyeh that does not leave her head and the bracelet of the country's flag adorning her wrist, so the camp residents and visitors pass by and greet her, while she tells some of them the story of her displaced village and her great longing to return to her land and farming, as well as sitting on the beautiful Haifa beach.

She is intensified by the continued aggression of the occupation against the camp and the persecution of its children, as well as her suffering from the difficulty of daily life, which stops her dream until a postponement. “How good is the first Nakba, my aunt, and what we are experiencing now are new calamities, and our conditions are getting more difficult day after day.”

Khadish recalls when the Zionist gangs forcibly displaced them by force of arms, and then transported them by buses to the plain of Marj Ibn Amer, while her family was dispersed in various Palestinian cities and Arab and foreign countries.

One day, after a long absence, she was able to cross the occupation checkpoints, to reach Haifa with her two sons, to visit one of her relatives who remained there. approaching him, she said.

The hope of return is hereditary
As for the refugee, Yasser Abu Kishk, from Al-Fara’a camp, he looks forward to a great hope that he had inherited from his father, who had always expected to return to his village, Abu Kishk (north of Jaffa), and remained clinging to his right and patient despite the harshness of the life they live in, with overcrowding and difficult environmental conditions in the camp.

Abu Kishk talks to Al-Quds.com about every refugee's dream of returning to his land, recalling his father's talk about their old home in Abu Kishk, citrus groves, vineyards, banana and pomegranate trees rooted in its fertile soil and watered by the waters of the Auja River, as well as swimming in the Jaffa Sea. And go to their big markets.

He continues, "I mourn these coastal lands that were forcibly taken from us, as well as my father's house, which he built two years before he was expelled, and it still exists today, but we cannot reach it because it is under the control of the occupation, which established a colony on the village lands."

The struggle of the refugees continues in their camps - according to Abu Kishk - as they confront poverty and unemployment in order to live a decent life, and many of them sit between four walls in a small house that may be devoid of windows or hidden in the shade of another house that blocks sunlight from it in the midst of a densely populated camp that lives above An area not exceeding one square kilometer.

They also constantly face the attacks of the occupation army on the camps in various cities of the West Bank, which terrorizes children and wreaks havoc on the property and homes of the people, which makes them reconcile with the tragedy of the first Nakba.

Abu Kishk continues: "No matter how much the occupier tries to tear our national identity and our social relations, most of the displaced families, including mine, are considered among the most closely related families, despite our dispersal in various camps in the West Bank, Lydda, Jordan, the Arab Gulf states, and even foreign countries."

Clinging to the ground despite the long distance
Refugee Raeda al-Dub’i, a resident of Nablus, hopes to visit her city (Lydda), to which she becomes more attached whenever she remembers her grandmother’s conversations about the city, as well as what she knows about the generosity, magnanimity and courage of its people, and the simplicity of their lives before the Nakba, as her grandfather used to leave his house at dawn from the darkness To pick the fig fruit and bring it from his land, and she explained: "My grandmother, may God have mercy on her soul, distinguished it from other fig fruits in other cities."

Al-Dubai says: "I have never forgotten my grandmother's stories about Lydda, and I believe in our right to return to our land no matter how much time has passed, and this right will not die or fall by statute of limitations, even if all the adults died, even if we died, so our children and grandchildren will come after us, preserving the history of our catastrophe well." .

And she continues, "Perhaps our return will not be soon in light of the lack of political solutions and the conspiracy being hatched against our people. Among the indications is the decline in the role of UNRWA, the only international witness to our calamity."

The world became blind, looking at the Palestinians with one eye, while always standing on the side of the stronger party, i.e. the occupier - according to Al-Dabai -, therefore, all the energies, knowledge and culture of the Palestinians must be harnessed in order to achieve the ultimate goal of return, in addition to the strong belief that this land is indivisible On two, and it has been for thousands of years for the Palestinians, and it is a promise of God who will never fail.

patriotic upbringing
As for the 12-year-old Roa’a Riahi from Balata camp, her national culture and identity were strengthened - and that of other camp children - when her parents told her the story of the displacement of her grandparents in 1948 from their village of Jamasin in Jaffa district, while they were able to cultivate belonging to that land in herself until a dream began. Back takes shape in her mind.

Riahi expresses her hope to return to her grandfather's village, noting that she went to visit Jaffa on a trip, but saw only its sea.

And she continues: "What I know about my village is that it is famous for its farming, and it is beautiful and close to the sea, but the occupation has displaced everyone in it since the Nakba, and after that my grandfather came and lived in the camp, as I saw the key to their house and some of their old belongings that he was able to bring with him when they were displaced." .

In this regard, Tayseer Nasrallah, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and head of the Jaffa Cultural Center in Balata camp, points out the necessity of educating the Palestinian generations about the importance of the right of return and bequeathing this right to them, saying: "Our right to return is inherited as well as heritage and language, just as it is with the passage of years." It shines brighter as gold," indicating that there are three evidences of the refugee issue: "UNRWA", the refugee, and the camp.

And he continues: "The occupier seeks to kill these evidences. It is trying to end the role of UNRWA as the international archive of our ongoing tragedy. It also targets the camps to end the national movement and the work of the institutions in it, which increases the role that falls on the Palestinian Authority to strengthen the steadfastness of the refugee in his camp, and the struggle for Securing a budget for the agency, which has become a Palestinian demand.