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From the time they arrived in the tent cities of Gaza until today Safaa’s family, like the other refugees, have never been allowed to return.

GAZA CITY — The Hamduni family used to live in the Palestinian city of Jaffa before it was torn apart with the creation of Israel.

Sixty years later, half the family lives in a quiet village in the north of what is now Israel while the other half is in the besieged Gaza Strip.

“I remember the days before the expulsion like a dream,” Safaa told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Monday, May 5, from the Beach Refugee Camp, a Gaza slum on a sewage-poisoned stretch of the Mediterranean coast.

“They were beautiful days. My father used to take us to the beach every Friday and to Al-Quds (occupied east Jerusalem) also.”

Half of the Hamduni family still lives in a quiet village in northern Israel.

Mahmud owns a tractor company and lives in a spacious and well-furnished house in the quiet village of Tamra where he has lived most of his life.

His father, Suleiman Hamduni, did not flee when Israel was established on the rubble of Palestine in 1948.

“My father used to say that those who didn’t fight were left alone. But in the villages where there was resistance, where there was shooting, the Israelis destroyed them completely.”

On April 18, 1948, Palestinian Tiberius was captured by Menachem Begin’s Irgun militant group, putting its 5,500 Palestinian residents in flight. On April 22, Haifa fell to the Zionist militants and 70,000 Palestinians fled.

On April 25, Irgun began bombarding civilian sectors of Jaffa, terrifying the 750,000 inhabitants into panicky flight.

On May 14, Jaffa completely surrendered to the much better-equipped Zionist militants and only about 4,500 of its population remained.

A day later Israel was created on the rubble of Palestine.

Return

From the time they arrived in the tent cities of Gaza until today Safaa’s family, like the other refugees, have never been allowed to return.

The 70-year-old woman still holds the keys to her family home in Jaffa, now an upscale suburb of Tel Aviv, from which her family fled in 1948.

“We teach our children that we will return one day to our homeland, we will return to Jaffa and to Tamra,” she says.

“We’ve kept the keys to the old house in Jaffa and the documents that prove we own it.”

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, defines as refugees the descendants of Palestinian who fled or were forced out of their homes in 1948.

The number of registered refugees has subsequently grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than 4.4 million in 2005, and continues to rise.

One-third of the refugees live in 58 recognized camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

UN resolutions guarantee the right of return of Palestinian refugees, many still holding the keys and titles of their homes in what is now Israel.

Safaa and her children, like many refugees, take a long view of their troubled history.

“God willing, we will return, either we or our children,” says Safaa’s daughter Sabah, 49, who was born in Gaza’s refugee camps.

“We want peace, not war, but it is the Jews’ destiny to return to the countries they came from and for us to return to Palestine.

“We are sure that the occupation will not last for ever.”

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