Feature: Palestinian refugees yearn for home return after decades of displacement

Depression and homesickness can be easily read on the wrinkled face of 82-year-old Palestinian Musbah Haniya. He spent 68 years of his life as refugee in the Gaza Strip after his hometown became part of Israel following the 1948 Israeli-Arab war.

Haniya now lives in a poor rundown home in western Gaza city's Shati refugee camp, one of the most overcrowded spots in the world.

Despite his age, Haniya can still recall the events of the Nakba, the day marking the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the war between the Arab armies and Israel in 1948.

"I still remember the day when my family and I fled our village in Askalan which neighbors Gaza," the feeble man said as he sat on a wooden single bed at his camp home. "My father was a fisherman, and we used his fishing boat to escape to Gaza through the waves of the Mediterranean in search for safety."

When the boat harbored on Gaza shore, the Haniya family was given a tent to stay. The family thought their stay would last for a few days until the war ends, but their life at the tent lasted for years.

"I never thought that I would live all these years as a refugee," Haniya narrates in despair, with a handful of grandchildren sitting on the floor around him. "But I cannot change such a destiny and I had to wait and wait, and I am still waiting for the return."

When the years pass, Haniya never lost the hope that he will return to his village again. But this hope did not prevent him from looking for a job, getting married and having a family.

"I have four sons, five daughters and more than 50 grandchildren," he added as he sipped at a cup of hot tea made by one of his grandsons. "But I am still hopeful that we will return one day and I always tell these kids that we will definitely return."

On May 15, the Palestinians mark the day of Nakba, or catastrophe, when the state of Israel was created and thousands of Palestinians were forced out of their homes and became refugees.

The refugees' struggle to return has been one of the key and thorniest issues in the final status negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis, as both cling to their own beliefs in this regard.

The Palestinians base their assertion of the right of return on the United Nations General Assembly resolution which calls for allowing the return of Palestinians refugees to their homeland and payment of compensation for those not wishing to go back a resolution that Israel still denies.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 957,000 Palestinians, or 66 percent of the population, were forced to leave their homes in 1948, before Israel came into being. The bureau also noted that the number of Palestinian refugees registered by the UN last year has reached nearly 5.6 million.

According to the statistics, 24 percent of the refugees live in Gaza, over 17 percent in the West Bank, nearly 40 percent in Jordan, less than 20 percent in Lebanon and Syria. There are about 2.8 million unregistered refugees live in Europe, the United States and a number of Arab countries.

Hossam Ahmed, Gaza-based expert of refugees' affairs, told Xinhua that the refugees issue is the most complicated one around the world. He stressed that the issue is the core of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, affirming that the conflict cannot be solved until a just solution to the refugees' plight is reached.

"A refugee camp is a symbol of poverty, injustice and destitute. Refugees in camps are increasing rapidly and they live on aid by the international agencies. I believe peace is unreachable without a fair solution to the refugees' crisis."

"Poverty is a trademark here... I have been poor, my sons were born poor and even my grandchildren and their sons will live poor. Poverty is linked to displacement in one way or another," the old man said. Endit