The New York Times · New York, NY · 16 April 2002

CP-2002-122

For Palestinian Refugees, Dream of Return Endures

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

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Transcribed from the clipping

BAQAA REFUGEE CAMP, Jordan, April 13 — Any boy wandering lost in the warren of streets and alleyways that form this camp will inevitably tell a concerned adult that he comes from someplace he has almost surely never been. “Jerusalem” he will say, or “Nablus,” or he will name some hamlet that once stood on land in what is now Israel.

The adult will know precisely how to get the child home. The refugees who fled the Israeli-Arab wars of 1948 or 1967 and ended up here named the quarters of the camp after the towns and villages they left behind, making the street map into a quilt of longing.

Their existence as refugees was supposed to be temporary, yet 54 years after the creation of Israel, millions of Palestinian refugees exist in suspended animation. Ever since that initial exodus in 1948, they have not been able to return home or assimilate. Feeling rejected everywhere, they keep their eyes firmly fixed on the horizon behind them.

The expectation that they will return ebbs and flows with the tide of violence across the Jordan River. But time is also reshaping that expectation. … “The reason for this fantastic attachment to Palestine is partly because the Arabs encouraged it,” said Kamel Abu Jaber, a retired Jordanian foreign minister and a peace negotiator.

“To say, let’s settle them, let’s absorb them, was considered treason and still is.” Predictions of old that the children of the 1948 refugees would forget about Palestine proved premature; indeed their great-grandchildren are now learning to spout the tortured list of historical, religious, legal and cultural reasons that they should be allowed back.

How this transcription was made

Date confirmed on the page (masthead-verified (folio line across the top of the page reads “NEW YORK, TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2002”, with “Copyright © 2002 The New York Times” at left; 16 April 2002 was a Tuesday)).

Context added by this archive

Masthead-verified date — the only clipping in the batch with a printed folio line carrying the full date. Terminologically this is a “Palestinian refugees” story, not an “Israeli Arab” one; its one use of “Israeli-Arab” names the 1948 and 1967 wars, which is a different sense of the compound entirely and should not be counted toward Maria’s pattern.

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