Palestinian Activists Prepare For Refugee Return - Al-Monitor: The Middle Eastʼs leading independent news source since 2012

Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

Mar 26, 2013

Palestinians wait for the return of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement activists at the Rafah border crossing in the southern Gaza Strip December 3, 2012. The Islamist Hamas group allowed the 10 activists, who fled Gaza into Egypt in 2007 during internal fighting between the two political rivals, to return home in what the group said was a sign of rapprochement, according to a Hamas official. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa (GAZA - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) - RTR3B66N — Palestinians wait for the return of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement activists at the Rafah border crossing in the southern Gaza Strip, Dec. 3, 2012. — REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

IQRIT, NORTHERN GALILEE — Standing on a rocky hilltop overlooking Lebanon, 23-year-old Haytham Sbait’s face lights up when asked what life would be like if he was able to live in his family’s ancestral village permanently.

“Simple,” the 23-year-old says, sipping tea from a paper cup as two brown donkeys graze in the short grass in front of him. “A small house, a horse, a donkey, the land. Simple.”

A cemetery and a hilltop church are all that remain of Iqrit, whose residents were forced to leave by the army months after the 1948 creation of Israel which sparked a war

Christians in Israel mark Easter in destroyed village

by Rosie Scammell

by Rosie Scammell

Amina al-Dabai is one of several million Palestinian refugees living in the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria

75 years after the Nakba, Palestinians still long for return

by Adel Zaanoun

by Adel Zaanoun

Arabs stand in Iqrit, northern Israel, May 10, 2008, as part of an annual pilgrimage to a village whose residents were ordered out by Jewish fighters during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The villagers, Arab citizens of Israel, have long demanded a right to return to the site to live. The visit coincided with Palestinian commemorations of the 1948 ?Nakba? or ?Catastrophe?, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes in what is now Israel. Picture taken May 10, 2008. REUTER

Knesset plans lobby for return of Palestinians to their villages

Daoud Kuttab

Daoud Kuttab

In Amman, reporting on Palestinian politics

Palestinians struggle to preserve memories in younger generation

Tessa Fox

Tessa Fox