Gaza camps commemorating the Nakba.. The names of neighborhoods from historical Palestine and Al-Of, Al-Ataba and Dabkeh are present in the refugees’ diaries

Gaza -

Mukhtar Hikmat Adwan does not care about the length of the years of immigration and asylum, and despair did not infiltrate himself after 74 years of the Nakba, and the establishment of the Israeli occupation state on the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948.

Between the Nakba and its 74th anniversary, Hikmat (79 years old) is still living in the "Barbara neighborhood" in the refugee camp in the city of Rafah (south of the Gaza Strip). It is one of eight camps in the small coastal strip, established by a United Nations resolution to accommodate refugees.

That child, who was five years old at the time of the Nakba, grew up, and his face became wrinkled, and graying of his hair invaded without graying his memory, and Adwan says - to Al Jazeera Net - "I lived among the alleys of this neighborhood as a child, married and had children and grandchildren, and I will not leave the house of camp except for Berbera or the grave."

Muhammad Adwan believes in the camp’s role in preserving national memory from the factors of time and plans to liquidate the case (Al-Jazeera)

talk of memories

When Al-Jazeera Net contacted Al-Mukhtar Adwan, he was participating in a wedding for one of his family members, but he did not hesitate to leave and take us to his office. This seventy refugee says, "Nothing compares to the pleasure of talking about the country."

At the top of this diwan are two large paintings, one representing a map of the village of Berbera, and the second is the Adwan family tree, and in one of its corners a picture of the martyr Kamal Adwan - from the founding generation of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) - who was assassinated by Israel in the seventies of the last century, and he is the uncle of Mukhtar Hikmat.

Al-Mukhtar uses these two paintings to talk to his visitors, born after the Nakba, about the village, which he visited for the last time before the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987. He says, “Today’s generation is more aware than its parents and grandparents from the generation of the Nakba, and the experience of the 48th (migration and asylum) cannot be repeated. one more time".

For an hour or more, Adwan spoke about Berbera with many minute details, its geography, its families, and its participation in the resistance against the Zionist gangs. His speech was only interrupted by the intervention of one of his cousins, Muhammad Adwan, saying, “By God, uncle, your constant talk about the country strengthens us and strengthens our steadfastness, and renews hope for return.” in our souls."

Hikmat Adwan was a child during the Nakba, and today he became the mukhtar of the village of Berbera, and he still dreams of returning (Al-Jazeera)

revolution stock

Muhammad, born in 1970, is a freed prisoner who spent years in the prisons of the occupation, and he tells Al Jazeera Net, "The camp is the stockpile of the revolution since the Nakba, and parents and grandparents are its fuel by constantly talking about Palestine with all this nostalgia."

“And what nostalgia, my son,” Al-Mukhtar said with much emotion, and he continued, “By God, I ate a grape from Berbera when I visited it.

Muhammad patted his shoulder, and said, "We will return sooner or later." He went on to talk about the role the refugee camps played in resisting occupation, shaping the consciousness of successive generations and preserving national memory.

He added, "It was important to preserve the names of our towns and villages, by calling them the refugee camps, as this is a resistance to the factors of time, and the occupation's efforts to falsify reality and distort Palestinian geography."

Only these names distinguish the refugee neighborhoods in the city of Rafah from others, as the population density mixed the camps with the city’s neighborhoods, and those houses built of bricks and roofed with “asbestos and tin” have largely disappeared, and in their place were houses of reinforced iron.

Estimates of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) indicate that the number of refugees in Rafah camp has risen from 41,000 who sought refuge there in 1948 to more than 125,000 currently, living in overcrowded houses and in very narrow streets, and it is one of the largest camps in the Strip. Refugees represent more than 80% of its population (two million people).

Children in the camps inherit pain and hope from generation to generation (Al-Jazeera)

return generation

In one of these streets in the "Yabna Camp", the two children, Muhammad Abu Ramadan and Obaid Abu Ashaiban, were playing with an old bicycle, and they emerged among other more courageous children, asking, "Do you imagine the Nakba?"

This camp acquired its name from the village of Yabna, the district of Ramle city inside occupied Palestine, and it includes a mixture of families, most of whom immigrated from this village, and others from neighboring cities and villages.

Abu Ramadan hails from a refugee family from the city of Jaffa, while the family of his friend Abu Ashaiban immigrated from the city of Beersheba, and they are energetic and motivated to answer questions together: “We will win and return to our country.”

History professor and researcher in refugee affairs, Nader Abu Sharkh - told Al Jazeera Net - that the stories told in the camps' homes, generation after generation, are what made the cause of Palestine, and the belief in returning to it alive, and growing in the hearts of such children.

The generation of the Nakba was clever - according to Abu Sharkh - when the families of each village and city gathered in neighborhoods inside the camps and named them the names of those villages and cities, out of love for the land and adherence to the right of return, and to keep these names and meanings present in the memory;

In each camp you will find alleys bearing the names of those stolen homes.

Muhammad Adwan (right) The camp is the stockpile of the revolution since the Nakba (Al-Jazeera)

The camps...the gates of return

The refugees rejected malicious ideas and schemes for decades, and failed to "settlement" and "family", and stuck to staying in refugee camps, which they still consider as a "temporary residence until return", as these camps and lanes in their names, and the struggles of their children, were a "stumbling block". In view of Israel's efforts to erase the memory of new generations, falsify history and distort geography, by replacing the Arab names of Palestinian towns with Hebrew names, Abu Sharkh says.

He added, "In the camp, the events of the Nakba are present, and the right of return is an absolute belief. The boy called him 'Rebel' and the girl 'Jaffa'. At weddings they sing the country's songs before migration: Al-Of, Al-Ataba, Al-Mijna, Dabkeh and Al-Dahiya. These traditions remained in circulation so that the homeland remains a title for joy, and the right of return remains in the refugees' diaries." .

In the camp, the elderly wear their traditional dresses, with their colors, decorations, and beauty of appearance.

In the camp, you will find people who have allotted a part of their yards or their interiors, or cut off parts of the street, even one meter, to plant in it something that connects them to the land and reminds them of their lost orchards, stolen farms and their looted goods. in Beersheba.

In it, you find refugees baking on a clay oven, just as the oven they left behind in their destroyed towns and villages;

They do not only eat bread, they feed revolution and feed their children with steadfastness, according to Abu Sharkh.