Sixty-seven years ago, the Palestinians awoke to a tragedy that ravaged their lives and distorted Palestinian hopes and fears. Over 800,000 people, approximately half the population of the then British Mandate territory of Palestine, were evicted from their homes and their ancestral lands. The horror was engraved on their faces at the time, and it has been a reality that they have since shared for decades and up to the present day. Scattered across the Middle East and prevented by Israel from returning home, Palestinian landowners who overnight had been turned into refugees did not need to ask about the fate of their homes. The broken bodies and spirits of the hundreds of thousands who had been forced into exile answered their question: Palestine was no more. Today, almost seven decades after the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, some of the Palestinians born in Palestine are still alive and still remember the horror of the 1948 dispossession and those miserable days. The generations who were born after the loss of their homeland, whether under the Israeli military occupation or in exile, and who did not witness the tragic experiences lived through by parents and grandparents also still retain the story. In their hearts and minds the memory of the Nakba (Catastrophe) is as strong as it is for those who witnessed it, and so are the hopes and dreams that refuse to fade despite the winds of war and the passage of time. Unable to return to their homes that are now in what today is Israel, the Palestinian refugees were obliged to live in great uncertainty about their future in the 59 refugee camps established by the United Nations. There, they awaited action by the international community to pressure Israel to implement their right of return to their homes. Sitting in the tents of the camps year after year, their only hope was offered by Article 11 of UN Resolution 194 of 1948, which says that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.” Sixty-seven years later, millions of Palestinian refugees are still barred from returning home and still live lives of perpetual waiting, enduring multiple hardships in exile. A look at the situation of the Palestinian refugees in the Yarmouk Refugee Camp in Syria, at those locked in the prison of Gaza, and at those living behind the apartheid wall in the West Bank tells the same story of an ongoing Nakba, one of constant suffering with no end in sight. This story is also told by those Palestinians who are currently running for their lives in Yemen or are risking their lives in the Mediterranean, undertaking deadly journeys across the sea in order to escape insecurity and find safety for their families. Horrific pictures and stories of Palestinian refugees continue to come to the world's attention in different forms, adding further chapters to the devastating events of the 1948 Catastrophe. Mohamed Maddi, a 36-year-old man from Gaza, is one recent victim of the ongoing Palestinian Nakba. This young father of several children passed away on 4 May in the Abu Yussef Al-Najjar Hospital in the Rafah Refugee Camp in Gaza having waited in vain for over six months for Gaza's only border crossing with Egypt to open so that he could receive medical treatment. When his hopes for the opening faded, he applied for a permit to travel through Israel to receive treatment either in a West Bank or a Jordanian hospital. But this piece of paper, a permit that signals life or death, hope or despair, was never issued despite the seriousness of Mohamed's condition. The doctors in Gaza did all they could, given the hospital's few resources and the shortages of medicines and other items resulting from Israel's inhumane blockade of the Gaza Strip, the longest in human history. At the end of a nine-month battle with cancer, Mohamed succumbed to a fate he might have avoided had he not lived in Gaza. Living under the constant fear of losing his son in Gaza where everything is uncertain and basic necessities such as electricity, fuel and water are unavailable for most of the day, Mohamed's father sent out a plea to the world. In an interview with the newspaper Al-Watan Voice only hours before his son's death, the father, breaking into tears, begged the interviewer: “My son is dying a hundred times a day every day. I want him to live for his children's sake. Tell me where to go. The borders are closed, the doors of life are shut, and everything is closed against him. Can anyone tell me where to go? Where is the humanity in this situation?” Mohamed's tragic story and the words of his father are just one example of what the present oppression means to the Palestinian refugees. The story exposes 67 years of open wounds. It epitomises the ongoing Nakba of Palestinians living under Israeli colonial occupation, as well as that of those scattered far away from home or trapped in war zones with a suspended present and an uncertain future. But the story of Mohamed and the words of his father also represent the story of a grand nation with a rich culture and history, one that has been abandoned by humanity but that has given rise to a determined people with aspirations and an unshakable belief in their rights and cause. The refugees are resilient and steadfast despite the horrors to which they have been subjected. They are still able to question and to look for alternatives. They are still able to break the silence and to make their demands. Their love for life and anguish are still heard. Their story is one of Palestinian doctors and medical personnel working day and night in Gaza hospitals for low or no salaries. The general narrative of refugees is often associated with poverty, backwardness, powerlessness and violence. But the story of the Palestinian refugees goes far beyond such decontextualised mainstream images. Poverty and violence have been imposed on Palestinian refugees who, despite their unbearable situation, are still among the best-educated and hardest-working people in the Middle East. They still hold tight to their dreams and their demands for their rights. On the 67th anniversary of the Nakba, the new generations are even more aware of their rights than were their parents, and they are just as ready to fight to claim them. Moreover, the refugees have started to address publicly the reality that many of them have shared privately, namely that the Palestinians are being erased not just by Israel, but also by the powers that endorsed the 1948 tragedy and that have allowed it to continue unchallenged. They are being further harmed by the silence of complicit governments. When I saw my grandmother following last summer's barbaric Israeli assault on Gaza, she repeated to me and my children, Tarek, 14, and Aziz, 6, the same words she had said to me in 2012. She talked about our village, Beit Daras, from which she was expelled in 1948. She talked about its land, its farms and the sycamore trees she had loved so dearly. She repeated once again that she was no longer worried about the future she had wanted for so long. She looked at us and said, “For many years, I felt as if I were walking alone. And as you know, walking alone is not a pleasant way to spend a journey. Because of my age, I cannot walk now, but I am also no longer alone. I can rest in peace even if I am not yet in Beit Daras. I know that Beit Daras is in your hearts and that you are not alone on your journey.” The writer is a visiting professor at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her book Apartheid in Palestine: Hard Laws and Harder Experiences is forthcoming from the University of Alberta Press.
