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75 Years After the Nakba, Palestinians Still Long for Return

A woman holds a key symbolizing the homes left by Palestinians in 1948, during a rally along the border east of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on May 1, 2023 marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. (AFP)
A woman holds a key symbolizing the homes left by Palestinians in 1948, during a rally along the border east of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on May 1, 2023 marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. (AFP)
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75 Years After the Nakba, Palestinians Still Long for Return

A woman holds a key symbolizing the homes left by Palestinians in 1948, during a rally along the border east of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on May 1, 2023 marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. (AFP)
A woman holds a key symbolizing the homes left by Palestinians in 1948, during a rally along the border east of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on May 1, 2023 marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. (AFP)

From her modest home in the blockaded Gaza Strip, Amina al-Dabai remembers the very different world in which she grew up more than seven decades ago.

Born in 1934, Dabai was still only a child when Israel was created on May 14, 1948.

Now she is one of 5.9 million Palestinian refugees living in the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria according to the United Nations.

They are descendants of more than 760,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes 75 years ago.

The event is known by Palestinians as the Nakba, or "catastrophe", during which more than 600 communities were destroyed or depopulated by Jewish forces, according to the Israeli organization Zochrot.

The memory of the Nakba, which is commemorated on May 15, has become a rallying point for the Palestinian quest for statehood.

It falls a day after Israel declared statehood in 1948, prompting an invasion by five Arab armies which the young nation defeated.

Ahead of the anniversary, AFP spoke to eight Palestinians in their 80s and 90s who were exiled during the Nakba to the Gaza Strip.

Soldiers in disguise

Dabai recalled the day "Jewish soldiers in disguise" arrived in her hometown of Lydda, now known as Lod in central Israel.

Because the fighters' faces were covered in keffiyehs, a scarf that has come to symbolize the Palestinian struggle, locals thought they were reinforcements sent from Jordan.

People were so delighted they "rushed for the fountain" in the town center to celebrate.

But realizing the soldiers were Jews, they "fled into the mosque and their homes".

"They (soldiers) stormed the mosque and killed everyone inside," she added. "I was young and saw it with my own eyes."

Planned deportation, expulsion or voluntary exile? A massacre of hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters in a conflict where both sides were guilty of atrocities?

The events of July 12 to 13, 1948, during the capture of Lod by Israeli forces, remain the subject of debate and intense controversy even to this day.

One thing seems certain: the town was emptied of almost all of its 30,000 Arab residents practically overnight.

Following the war, the West Bank fell under Jordanian rule while Gaza was controlled by Egypt.

"We lived comfortably" until that point, recalled Dabai, as she reminisced about children playing on swings, the central market, and the trickling of water from a large fountain surrounded by shops.

But she is bitter about what she lost: "We were a weak country and we did not have powerful weapons."

The day after the disguised soldiers arrived, she said, they returned with orders -- leave Lod, or be killed.

"We said we don't want to leave. They said they would kill us. So all the poor people left, and we were among them," said Dabai.

The family fled on foot, walking for several days until they reached the town of Bir Zeit, near Ramallah in the West Bank, then moving on towards Egypt.

But the journey was too expensive and so the family settled in Gaza instead.

Like many, they were sure they would be back soon.

Only after the Oslo Accords established the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s did Dabai manage to obtain a permit to visit her old neighborhood in Lod.

"I put my hand on the wall of our house and said: 'my love, my grandfather's house, is destroyed, and our neighbors' homes are inhabited by Jews'", she said.

She told AFP she would not accept any compensation for the home, and no longer expected to return, but insisted that "future generations will liberate the country and return".

"No one was filming the massacres and what was happening, in the way we do today," she added, her voice breaking.

'They surrounded the village'

Umm Jaber Wishah was born in 1932 in the village of Beit Affa, near Ashkelon in what is now southern Israel.

Decades later, with her greying hair covered by a white shawl, she painfully recounts how things were initially peaceful.

When Jews first came to the area of the village, "they did not harm us and we didn't harm them," she told AFP from her home in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

"The Arabs worked for them (Jews) without problems, in safety," she added.

Yet the coexistence did not last long. She remembers the day in May 1948 that it shattered.

"I was baking bread, and they surrounded the village," she said, fighting back tears.

"They (Jewish soldiers) began besieging the village from the eastern side, and we hid from the shooting until the next day."

"The men were tied up and were then taken prisoner, the children were screaming," she said.

According to Zochrot, Beit Affa was taken by Jewish forces the first time in July 1948 for a few days. During this period the residents in all likelihood left, ahead of the village's decisive capture later that year.

As in Palestinian refugee camps across the region, Bureij has long since traded temporary tents for more permanent structures of brick and wood. But many displaced still live in poverty.

Wishah, a wooden walking stick resting against her leg, said her Bureij home "means nothing".

"Even if they gave me the whole Gaza Strip in exchange for my homeland, I wouldn't accept it. My village is Beit Affa."

Rusty keys

Ibtihaj Dola, from the coastal city of Jaffa, also remembers living side-by-side with Jews before Israel was established.

One of her relatives through marriage was Jewish and the city's large Jewish minority "could speak Arabic", said the 88-year-old.

Dola remembered returning home from school one day to find her family packing and preparing to flee.

They boarded a boat for Egypt. She was still wearing her school uniform.

"I know Jaffa inch by inch," she said, fiddling with four rusty keys at her bedside in Gaza's Al-Shati refugee camp.

After the Oslo Accords she found an opportunity to return to Jaffa, where she discovered a Jewish woman was living in her house.

"We drank tea together and I started crying," she said, realizing the woman was not interested in the fate of the previous owners.

Many of those who were displaced assumed it would just be temporary. They locked their front doors and took large metal keys with them.

Those keys today have become a symbol of their plight and their over-riding demand to return. In many homes, these keys are kept safely in a locked box under a bed, or memorialized in drawings and embroidery.

Israel claims Palestinians left voluntarily during the fighting and has repeatedly rejected claims its forces may have been responsible for war crimes.

It has steadfastly denied Palestinians the right to return -- often a sticking point in peace talks -- claiming it would be tantamount to a demographic surrender of the state's Jewish nature.

In 2011, after demonstrators marking Nakba day clashed with police, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the participants of "questioning the very existence of Israel".

Recognition of the Nakba is strongly rejected by Israelis, according to Zochrot which works to raise awareness of this period in history.

According to the organization, Israelis "are taught a false, greatly distorted but convincing narrative of 'a land without a people for a people without a land'."

'Injustice does not last'

Hassan al-Kilani, born in 1934 in Burayr village just north of the Gaza Strip, said he would only accept compensation if there was a political agreement.

"We, Arabs and Palestinians, cannot match the strength of Israel, let's be realistic," he said, wearing a crisp white headscarf.

"We resist, but our resistance is limited compared to our enemy," he added.

Kilani, a former construction worker, sketched a plan of Burayr, noting the name of each family, plot by plot.

The drawing now hangs on the wall of his living room, a constant reminder of the village where he grew up.

"Everyone who remained in the country was killed... even livestock, camels and cows," he said.

On another wall of the living room, a key is hung, symbolizing the longed-for return.

"Injustice does not last," he added, but acknowledged, "I am old. How many years do I have left to live?"

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Gemayel to Asharq Al-Awsat: Khaddam was Assad’s Stick to Apply Pressure

Relations between Gemayel and Khaddam were highly tense (Getty)
Relations between Gemayel and Khaddam were highly tense (Getty)
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Gemayel to Asharq Al-Awsat: Khaddam was Assad’s Stick to Apply Pressure

Relations between Gemayel and Khaddam were highly tense (Getty)
Relations between Gemayel and Khaddam were highly tense (Getty)

Late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad was a masterful negotiator, fiercely protective of his image and reputation. He was known for exhausting his guests with lengthy detours into history before addressing the substance of any talks.

Assad had an exceptional ability to restrain his anger, circling around an issue before striking again — often with calculated patience.

He avoided coarse language, allowing resentments to speak for themselves, but he never forgave those he believed had tried to derail his vision. Among them, according to accounts, were Yasser Arafat, Kamal Jumblatt, Bashir Gemayel, Amine Gemayel, and Samir Geagea.

In dealing with rivals and pressuring opponents, Assad often relied on a trusted enforcer: Abdel Halim Khaddam, his long-time foreign minister and later vice president. In the second part of his interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, former Lebanese President Amine Gemayel said Khaddam was Assad’s “stick,” used to assert control.

Many Lebanese politicians believed Khaddam’s bluntness was not personal, but rather a reflection of an official mandate from his mentor.

Assad rarely issued direct threats. Instead, he preferred subtle intimidation — as when he told Gemayel that his aides had once suggested blowing up President Anwar Sadat’s plane to prevent him from reaching Jerusalem.

Khaddam, the late Syrian strongman’s long-serving envoy, was known for humiliating both allies and foes who dared defy Damascus’ directives. His tactics were often unsettling — deliberately designed to leave visitors unnerved and pliant by the time they reached Assad’s office.

In a conversation in Paris during his retirement, Khaddam defended his hardline methods, saying they were not meant to insult but to prevent potentially dangerous confrontations. “The aim was to avoid escalation that could lead to security agencies taking over, which might have resulted in worse outcomes,” he said.

In the same meeting, Khaddam accused former Lebanese President Amine Gemayel of obstructing a political solution in Lebanon, calling him “hesitant and suspicious.”

He also acknowledged Assad was caught off guard when the Tripartite Agreement collapsed. The Syrian leader, Khaddam said, had not believed anyone in Lebanon would openly defy Syria — or the other Lebanese factions who had signed the accord.

“President Assad had many cards to play. President Sarkis had none,” recalled former Lebanese Foreign Minister Fouad Boutros, reflecting on the stark imbalance between Syria and Lebanon during Elias Sarkis’s presidency.

Assad, he said, had the power to topple or paralyze the Lebanese government before Sarkis even returned to Beirut. “Sarkis had no leverage over Assad,” Boutros noted. “But while Sarkis often showed flexibility, he would stand firm when asked to compromise Lebanon’s core principles.”

Boutros, who played a key role in Lebanon’s diplomacy during the civil war, said he had to exercise utmost restraint to keep Khaddam — Syria’s often abrasive envoy — from derailing talks with personal attacks or inflammatory language.

The dynamic, he suggested, was not unique to Sarkis. It also echoed the later, uneasy relationship between Gemayel and Assad.

Gemayel recalled a cold and confrontational relationship with Khaddam, describing him as “the stick and the poison” used by Assad to pressure Beirut into submission.

“There was no warmth between us from the beginning,” Gemayel told Asharq Al-Awsat.

“Khaddam used underhanded tactics to undermine the presidency and sow division within my team. While President Assad treated me with respect and politeness, he needed someone to apply pressure — and that was Khaddam,” he added.

Gemayel said Khaddam was behind all the pressure campaigns Syria waged against him — all with Assad’s full knowledge. “Assad played the courteous statesman. Khaddam handled the dirty work. Syria wanted me to sign agreements harmful to Lebanon’s interests, and Khaddam was the one tasked with forcing my hand.”

Despite Khaddam’s harsh demeanor, Gemayel said he never allowed him to overstep.

“I kept him in check. He didn’t dare cross the line with me. We were once in a meeting with President Assad, and Khaddam had been spreading ridiculous rumors beforehand. When he spoke up, I turned to Assad and said: ‘Mr. President, we have a problem with Khaddam. Please ask him to stop acting like a spy when dealing with us.’”

Khaddam, Gemayel said, tried to intimidate many Lebanese politicians — but not him.

“He was rude, even insolent to the point of absurdity. But he knew that if he said anything out of line with me, I would respond immediately.”

Assad’s Subtle Control and the Language of Minorities

Assad understood early on the fragility of Lebanon’s sectarian makeup. To him, the country was a meeting place for minorities — one that always needed an external patron to manage its wars and truces. He allowed for limited victories, but never total defeat, ensuring that no side could do without Syria’s oversight.

Assad sought to rule Syria indefinitely, with Lebanon as a backyard extension of his regime. Yet unlike his brother Rifaat, he avoided openly sectarian rhetoric or calls for partition. Rifaat, according to Gemayel, once suggested dividing both Syria and Lebanon along sectarian lines during a conversation with Lebanese leaders Walid Jumblatt and Marwan Hamadeh.

When asked whether he ever felt his dialogue with Assad was, at its core, a conversation between an Alawite and a Maronite, Gemayel replied: “No — that was Rifaat’s language. He used to say minorities must come together and show solidarity. But that narrative was never pushed by President Assad or his inner circle. It was always tailored to serve their own agenda.”

Assad’s political strategy was built on gathering leverage — and minority groups were central to that plan. His ties with Lebanon’s Druze community, and his clash with Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt, fit squarely within this framework. Assad relied on Syria’s own Druze population, as well as the Christian minority, to tighten his grip on the country’s diverse communities and align them under the banner of his regime.

“Assad had a firm hold on the minorities,” Gemayel said, adding that “he brought them all together to make them part of the Syrian system.”

Tensions between Syria’s Alawite leadership and the country’s Sunni majority were well known, Gemayel added, particularly through the candid rhetoric of Assad’s brother, Rifaat.

“Rifaat was open about the hostility between Alawites and Sunnis,” Gemayel said. “In his conversations with us, it was clear. But with President Assad, there was no visible sign of that. What lay beneath the surface, only God knows — but in our dealings with him, we never felt it.”

Gemayel Dismisses Reports of a Syria-Lebanon Confederation Proposal

Asked about longstanding claims that former Lebanese President Camille Chamoun had once proposed a confederation between Lebanon and Syria to Hafez al-Assad, Gemayel was quick to reject the idea.

“That’s absolutely not true,” he said. “President Chamoun would never have made such a proposal. A lot of things were said at the time. There were even reports that US envoy Dean Brown had suggested relocating Lebanon’s Christians to California — all of it nonsense, poetic talk with no grounding in reality.”

Gemayel also addressed one of the most controversial moments in US diplomacy during Lebanon’s 1988 presidential crisis: the phrase reportedly used by US envoy Richard Murphy — “Mikhael Daher or chaos.”

Daher, a Christian MP close to Damascus, had been floated as the only candidate acceptable to both Syria and the United States.

But Washington later distanced itself from the deal. The episode, Gemayel said, underscored a period in which American pressure aligned more with Syrian — and by extension, Israeli — interests, leaving Lebanon’s sovereignty hanging in the balance.

Gemayel confirmed that US envoy Richard Murphy did indeed issue the stark ultimatum in 1988. The phrase, which became emblematic of foreign interference in Lebanon’s presidential crisis, reflected what Gemayel described as Washington’s unwillingness to confront Damascus — despite acknowledging its destabilizing role in Lebanon.

“Yes, Murphy said it,” Gemayel affirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat.

“The Americans had a problem — they wanted Syria, and they didn’t. They knew Syria was playing a destructive role in Lebanon, but they didn’t want to challenge it. They kept trying to find common ground with Syria, not with us.”

According to Gemayel, the US saw Daher — a respected Christian parliamentarian close to Damascus — as a palatable compromise. “They thought Daher was a respectable figure who might be acceptable to the Lebanese, so they went along with Syria’s choice,” he said.

Washington, he added, had consistently prioritized pragmatism over principle in Lebanon, often aligning with whichever side could deliver results — even if it came at Beirut’s expense.

“It was the same with the May 17 Agreement with Israel,” Gemayel said, referring to the short-lived 1983 accord.

“The US couldn't pressure Israel, so Lebanon had to pay. And they couldn’t pressure Syria either — Syria was stubborn, had resources, and they didn’t want a confrontation. So they kept trying to sell us solutions that weren’t in Lebanon’s interest.”

“The Americans were always looking for the quickest deal,” he added. “They wanted to please both Syria and Israel. With Syria, it was clear — they didn’t want to upset Assad, because they knew who held the real power in Lebanon.”

Gemayel said that while he personally held the reins in decision-making and negotiations with Syria during his time in office, several close advisers and intermediaries played essential roles in laying the groundwork for dialogue with Damascus.

“The relationship and final decisions were in my hands,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

“I was the one doing the actual negotiating. But when it came to preparation, the late Jean Obeid played a very valuable role. He was intelligent, committed to Lebanon’s interests, and had close ties with the Syrians. He couldn’t get everything done, but he managed to ease certain issues,” said Gemayel.

Gemayel also credited Eli Salem, another aide, for navigating delicate talks with Syrian officials — particularly with Khaddam.

“Salem had a knack for getting through on specific points,” Gemayel said. “He had good chemistry with Khaddam, and that helped, especially since Khaddam and I didn’t get along.”

One figure who unexpectedly played a constructive role, according to Gemayel, was Brigadier General Jamil al-Sayyed, then an intelligence officer stationed in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley.

“You may be surprised,” he said, “but Jamil al-Sayyed was very helpful. Whenever I was heading to Damascus, I would stop in the Bekaa to meet him. He gave me very precise insights into what was happening at the Syrian presidential palace and the broader picture in Damascus. He was well-informed, sincere, and provided intelligence that wasn’t widely available — information that truly benefited Lebanon.”

Asked whether Syria was uneasy about the role of veteran journalist and diplomat Ghassan Tueni in his administration, Gemayel said the Syrians had little affection for him.

“There was never any warmth toward Ghassan,” he said. “He came with me to Syria just once, and it was clear there was tension. Whenever he was present, things got heated. Ghassan and Khaddam were like a ping-pong match — constantly hitting the ball back and forth.”

The friction, Gemayel explained, stemmed in large part from Tueni’s association with An-Nahar, the Beirut daily he helped lead, which often published sharp criticism of Syria.

“Syria never appreciated An-Nahar,” Gemayel said. “Even if Ghassan tried to distance himself from specific articles, the content was out there for everyone to see — and the Syrians didn’t forget it.”