GAZA / WEST BANK: Palestinians displaced by the 1967 Israeli-Arab war reflect on Israeli occupation, economic hardship and life in a Gaza refugee camp

Record ID: 409048

  • Title: GAZA / WEST BANK: Palestinians displaced by the 1967 Israeli-Arab war reflect on Israeli occupation, economic hardship and life in a Gaza refugee camp
  • Date: 6th June 2007
  • Summary: CLOSE OF UM ALI'S FACE CLOSE OF UM ALI'S HANDS (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) PALESTINIAN REFUGEE UM ALI SAYING: "Of course I remember, why shouldn't I remember it? I will also shout it out: I wish I had died before seeing this land (refugee camp). I wish to God I had died. My son, the people are tired, they are eating dirt."
  • Embargoed: 21st June 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: History
  • Reuters ID: LVA3NL8SACT2NPZ4ZJ6H8A03YM5W
  • Story Text: Um Ali, a resident of the Beach refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, has lived through two major Arab-Israeli wars in her 85 years, and is still homesick for her original Palestinian village in what is now Israel.
    The grandmother and great-grandmother of 30 children says she not only remembers the 1967 war in which Israel captured the Gaza Strip and West Bank amongst other Arab lands. But as Palestinians mark 40 year of Israeli occupation on June 5, Um Ali says she also recalls very well the 1948 war that drove her from her now destroyed village of Sawafeer near the Gaza Strip.
    "Of course I remember, why shouldn't I remember it? I will also shout it out: I wish I had died before seeing this land (refugee camp). I wish to God I had died. My son, the people are tired, they are eating dirt," she said in Beach refugee camp, one of the most poverty-stricken and overcrowded places in the world.
    Um Ali sat on the ground in a dusty and unpaved street in Beach refugee camp, a home for over 90,000 refugees, playing and talking to some of her great-grandchildren.
    She was 25 years when she had to carry her three children and run from their village to escape the Jewish army when Israel was created, a event which made up to three quarters of a million Palestinians internally displaced or refugees.
    The anniversary was known by Palestinians and Arabs as the "Nakba," or "Catastrophe."
    At the age of 44 Umm Ali witnessed yet another fateful war, known by Palestinians as the "Naksa," or "Setback," when Arabs lost even more land to Israel in six days of war that began on June 5, 1967.
    The war, preceded by Egypt's closing of Israel's access to a key Red Sea shipping lane, began with Israeli air raids that destroyed the bulk of the Egyptian air force.
    It ended with Israel occupying the West Bank -- including Arab East Jerusalem -- the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Sinai desert.
    Another Beach camp refugee, Abu Muhammad, was 18 year at the time of the 1967 war.
    "We used to be kings in our home towns, then we were forced to abandon them, then now we are living in bad houses. Today I went to get a (food) coupon (handed out by United Nations), but I did not find one. We are a nation which runs on coupons," said Abu Muhammad.
    The fate of Palestinian refugees has proven one of the thorniest issues in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel rejects any solution that would allow hundreds of thousands of refugees back into what is now Israel.
    Refugees depend mostly on food aid from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency UNRWA inside their camps. Their life has been hardened by a Western embargo imposed against the Hamas-led government last year.
    In the West Bank, Palestinians gathered at the Hawara Israeli military checkpoint near Nablus for a rally to mark the Arab defeat of 1967.
    "We send this message to the world: the 1967 defeat war will not stop us from resisting, it will not stop us from demanding our rights, and it will not stop us from resisting our heavily armed enemy with our naked chests," said Ghassan Hamdan, a speaker at the demonstration.
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