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After 65 Years of Nakba, Hope In New Palestinian Generation

The latest generation of Palestinian refugees may be one to restore the right of return.
A teacher shows Palestinian students how to use new laptops at a United Nations school in Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip April 29, 2010. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) launched a campaign to distribute some 200,000 laptops to UNRWA students in the Gaza Strip, an UNRWA official said. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa (GAZA - Tags: POLITICS EDUCATION) - RTR2D9BM

Palestinians in refugee camps and Arabs everywhere remember the Nakba. May 15 marks the 65th anniversary of this tragedy, which resulted in the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in the wake of the creation of Israel.

To this day, many families still keep the keys to their old houses as symbolic family heirlooms: a culture of knowledge about the past. These keys have been the seeds of stories about lives ripped apart — witnesses to a better day. Passed down to each subsequent generation, the keys stood out as the only remaining symbol that a return was possible. The keepers of these keys never gave up hope, but their hope had waned to a point where the right of return seemed dim indeed. That is, until the new generation of Palestinian refugees.

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