SYRIA: Palestinian refugee Khamis Jaradat keeps alive memories of the home his family lost in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war

Record ID: 279977

  • Title: SYRIA: Palestinian refugee Khamis Jaradat keeps alive memories of the home his family lost in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war
  • Date: 13th May 2010
  • Summary: CLOSE OF DEEDS
  • Embargoed: 28th May 2010 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: War / Fighting,International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVACWM8YENBCU3S31B8SAG7Y8GVG
  • Story Text: Khamis Jaradat, a 77 year-old Palestinian man living in Damascus, spends most of his days remembering the life he had in the Palestinian village of al-Zanghariyya in the Safad district before the state of Israel was founded in May 1948. Then Jewish forces entered his village and the population was forced to leave, Jaradat says, and most of the village's refugees fled into Syria.
    To Jewish Israelis, the anniversary of Israel's independence is a day of celebration. But this weekend Palestinian refugees will mourn the 62nd anniversary of the "Nakba," or "catastrophe" of dispossession, when they lost what they view as their ancestral homeland in what used to be Palestine. Many of them cling to a "right of return" to what is now Israel.
    Jaradat also dreams of returning one day and tries to keep the memory of his original home alive by collecting items from that area. Apart from personal belongings his family managed to take with them, he buys traditional Palestinian items from friends and relatives taken from Palestinian homes and buildings both before and after 1948. His family complains that sometimes he spends money to buy these mementoes instead of buying food.
    On one of his maps he wrote the names of home owners before 1948 so citizens of the village will be able to find their homes easily in the event they return.
    Jaradat asked his sons to try to bury him near the site of his old village when he dies.
    "From the first day I left Palestine, I wished to return to it. My dream is Palestine. I do not have any wishes but to return to Palestine and I wish to die in Palestine. I entrusted my sons to take my body to Palestine if I die outside it. I entrusted them to bury me in Palestine," he said.
    The title deeds to his old house and the keys to the homes his family used to own are still in Jaradat's possession even though the village was destroyed in 1948 and the houses have been demolished. He shows them to his grandchildren to keep the Palestinian cause present in the mind of the new generations.
    "To remember Palestine. This kid would remember Palestine when he sees the key. He would ask his parents whose key is that. This key is to Palestine. Palestine can not be forgotten because as long as the key is available, the dress is available, the copper and the Palestinian tradition is available, Palestine will be available."
    Jaradat's wife Hasna was not even four years old when she fled to Syria in 1948 and this is where the couple got married. But she continues to wear Palestinian dress and also wishes to return to al-Zanghariyya.
    "Our country has now been destroyed by the Jews. I hope we return to it and re-build to live with honour. There is nothing like home."
    Khamis Jaradat and his family also sing traditional songs to remember their homeland.
    According to UNRWA's (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East) latest report published in December 31, 2009, Syria hosts over 470.000 Palestinians in 12 camps around the country. The refugees enjoy civil but not political rights.
    In total, about 4.7 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants live in squalid camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the occupied West Bank and Gaza, or in a wider diaspora.
    Palestinians -- and some Israeli scholars -- say Zionist leaders ordered systematic ethnic cleansing to clear the way for the Jewish state.
    Israel rejects this, saying the refugee problem resulted from a war launched by Palestinians opposed to the U.N. partition plan adopted on Nov. 29, 1947, and by Arab states which invaded as soon as the British Mandate expired on May 15, 1948.
    The upshot was that of the nearly 1.4 million Arabs who lived in Palestine in 1947, more than 700,000 had been displaced from their homes by 1949, according to a consensus view.
    Before fighting began in late 1947, about a million Arabs and 600,000 Jews lived in what was to become Israel. Israel emerged with 78 percent of Mandate Palestine. The U.N. plan, rejected by the Arabs, would have given it 56 percent.
    Israel firmly opposes letting any refugees return to their original homes, on the grounds that this would effectively destroy the Jewish state by threatening its Jewish majority.
    The PLO has accepted the conciliatory wording of an Arab League peace plan calling for a "just and agreed solution" in line with a U.N. resolution proposing return or compensation for refugees willing to live at peace with their neighbours.
    For now a final peace agreement seems remote, but many Palestinians yearn for some Israeli admission of responsibility for what they see as the historic injustice done to them.
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