Feature: Oldest Palestinian refugee clings to right of return

When Rajab Mohamed al-Toom was forced to leave his home in Beer Sheva city in 1948 at the age of 60, he thought he would return in just days or weeks.

Today, 67 years later, al-Toom, now 127, is still stuck in Jabalya, a refugee camp in northern Gaza.

The size of his family, at eight members when he left behind a land of 20 dunum (about 4.94 acres), where wheat, barley and corn were grown, has grown to 350.

"Since I left Beer Sheva in 1948, I have never been back to my home and my land," said al-Toom, who is considered the oldest Palestinian refugee.

A birth certificate shows that Rajab Mohamed al-Toom was born in 1888.

He also keeps deeds proving ownership of his home and land in the city that is now part of Israel.

Al-Toom witnessed the birth of Israel in 1948 on a day that the Palestinians call al-Nakba, or the catastrophe, when thousands of Palestinians left their homes in towns and villages in historic Palestine.

The Palestinian refugee situation is considered one of the most protracted cases of forced displacement in world history.

According to a report by Palestinian Statistics Bureau Center, 957,000 Palestinians left their homes in historic Palestine in 1948, about 66 percent of the total number of Palestinians lived there at the time.

Historic Palestine is now divided into the state of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

According to the Palestinian statistics report, there are about 5 million Palestinian refugees around the world, 40 percent of whom now live in camps in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

The question of refugees remains one of the most crucial issues in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said that he does not want to fill Israel with millions of Palestinian refugees but rather he seeks a fair solution that let the Palestinian refugees themselves to make their own choices.

Over the years, many refugees have already settled in other Arab and foreign countries; they may choose not to return, and accept the option of compensation instead.

However, the Islamic Hamas movement insists that the Palestinian refugees' right of return is one that can never be divided and that the Palestinians have no alternative homeland.

Aatef Odwan, who heads the Palestinian refugee committee in the Hamas-controlled Palestinian parliament, said "all polls and surveys have shown that the vast majority of the Palestinians stick to their lands and to their right of return, no matter how many years have passed."

And al-Toom is one of those who cling to the hope that they will return to their native land someday.

He considers the family house in Jabalya, built up in 1949, only "temporary."

"Our real house is still there in Beer Sheva," al-Toom said. "I'm still waiting and I'm sticking to my legal right of return." Endit