Plight of Palestinian refugees now spans 5 generations

The Associated Press, Jerash Camp, Jordan

Transcribed from the clipping

“As a boy, Palestinian Abdullah Abu Massoud fled the war over the birth of Israel in 1948 and sought refuge in the nearby Gaza Strip. As an adult, Abu Massoud was displaced again when Israeli forces captured Gaza, along with the West Bank and east Jerusalem, in 1967. He escaped to Jordan, where he has been living in a refugee camp for 50 years. Now 77, Abu Massoud is the white-haired patriarch of a refugee family spanning five generations, including a great-great-granddaughter. The future looks bleak. ‘Fifty years have passed without a step forward,’ said Abu Massoud. ‘We don’t belong here.’… More than 700,000 Palestinians were uprooted at the time… Today, 5.3 million Palestinians and their descendants are registered with UNRWA in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza Strip… A 29-year-old grandson of Bassama and Abdullah, Alaa Abu Awad, has never set foot in historic Palestine… He has tacked a Palestinian flag to the wall of his shop in Jerash camp. ‘It’s the flag of my homeland,’ said Abu Awad.”

Photograph caption

Five generations of a Palestinian refugee family, the Abu Massouds, pose for a portrait. The plight of Palestinians uprooted by Israeli-Arab wars is one of the longest-running refugee crises. As the second wave of displacement hits the half-century mark, a solution for millions of refugees and their descendants is more distant than ever. The Associated Press.

Context added by this archive

Three named Palestinians across five photographed generations, and a man of 29 who has never seen the country on the flag in his shop.

Cite this item

"Plight of Palestinian refugees now spans 5 generations," Hickory Daily Record, 24 April 2017. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2017-002. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2017-002

Elsewhere in the archive

Palestinians fear Trump will put them on sidelinesDaily American Republic · 8 February 2017 · the same year
50 years after war, settlements blur future bordersNew Jersey Herald · 14 April 2017 · the same year
Alliance between Palestinians, Israelis and American Jews offers hopeThe Patriot Ledger · 14 June 2017 · the same year

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2017-002.

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