Jordan Times
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Pullout revives hopes of
returning home
GAZA CAMP (AP) — As children in the street chanted “Gaza is liberated,”
65-year-old Ayed Suleiman Abu Hashish broke into tears.
“I can't wait to go back,” he said. “I bet it has changed a lot since I left
nearly 40 years ago.”
Many in this squalid camp said Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip which began
Monday had revived hopes they could return to the Mediterranean strip and homes
they fled in the 1967 Middle East war.
The fate of refugees — many who also fled or were forced to leave land that made
up the state of Israel before the 1967 war — was still to be negotiated with the
Palestinians in so-called final status talks.
Also at issue in those thorny talks will be the status of Jerusalem, which the
Palestinians want as their capital although it has been under Israeli occupation
since the 1967 war.
In the meantime, Israel will still control all forms of entry into Gaza and the
West Bank.
So far, Israel has not recognised the Palestinian people's right of return to
their homeland but indicated that it was willing to allow a limited number of
them to join relatives in Israel under family reunification.
Even so, Israel was likely to bar the bulk of Palestinian refugees from going
back to Gaza or the West Bank, from where Israel has also pledged to withdraw
four settlements while keeping the bulk of the enclaves intact.
At Gaza Camp's only traditional coffee shop, regulars rejoiced over the Israeli
withdrawal and were given free coffee and tea.
In one smoke-filled corner, 67-year-old Mohammad Al Ghazzawi, wore a traditional
white- and black-checkered headdress as he quizzed his friends about their
future plans.
“Do you think the Israelis will allow us back in Gaza?” he asked as he sipped
spiced Arabic coffee.
“No,” the answer came quickly from Ismail Abu Taha, puffing on his water pipe.
“The Israelis are only manoeuvring to show the world that they're giving back
lands to Palestinians, but we're not in their books; we have long been
forgotten,” he said.
Two blocks away, Umm Mohammad, 72, disagreed. “Why would they give back the land
if they won't allow its owners to go live in it. Don't listen to this nonsense,”
she said, standing on the doorstep of her shabby convenience store, wearing a
black dress and handing out candy to neighbourhood children.
“Palestine is Arab” and “Gaza is liberated” chanted the children, some as young
as 5. An open sewer flowed along the street from a nearby cluster of rundown
brick homes with temporary roofs.
Passersby gave the children thumbs up and victory signs, as they left a school
that is run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. The organisation
oversees services — including healthcare and education — to some 13 refugee
camps in Jordan.
Gaza Camp, which is west of the Greco-Roman city of Jerash and about 50
kilometres north of Amman, is home to 27,000 Palestinian refugees. It has the
largest concentration of Gaza natives.
UNRWA estimates that there is a total of 122,000 Gazans living in Jordan, which
is the largest Arab host to the estimated total of 1.8 million Palestinian
refugees.
Unlike many of their counterparts from the West Bank, Gaza refugees do not carry
Jordanian passports and many have temporary travel documents from Egypt, which
had administered the strip until the 1967 war.
Jordan ruled the West Bank for 17 years ending with Israel's occupation of the
territory in the same war. The Kingdom has offered passports to natives of the
West Bank to facilitate their travel, but says refugees can relinquish those
travel documents if they decided to move back to the West Bank under a future
Palestinian-Israeli deal.
In neighbouring Lebanon's Ein Al Hilweh camp, the country's largest with a
population of 75,000, the pullout from Gaza generated feelings of joy and hope.
Lebanon is third after Jordan and Syria in the number of Palestinians refugees.
Palestinian fighters from various factions joined civilians and old women, their
heads covered with white scarves, in the Arabic Dabkeh dance accompanied by
bagpipes in the teeming camp.
“When the Intifada (uprising against occupation) began, we felt that something
would be achieved. Today, we are sure that this Intifada has begun achieving the
first of its goals with Gaza's independence,” said Lt. Col. Maher Shabaitah, who
heads the mainstream Fateh resistance movement office in Ein Al Hilweh.
Ramzi Qabalawi, 55, a refugee who has been living in Lebanon since the founding
of Israel in 1948, said the Gaza withdrawal was “a great victory” for the
Palestinians.
“As a refugee since 1948, I feel victory for the first time. Had it not been for
the resistance and stepped-up attacks on Israel, they (Israelis) would have
never thought of withdrawal,” he said.
Jubilation at Jordan's Gaza Camp, however, was dimmed by the suspicion that
Israel's pullout from Gaza was a tactic to strengthen Israel's grip on the West
Bank.
“Any inch of Palestinian land given back to us is good,” said Ibrahim Jallad,
35, a sanitation worker. “But it looks like Gaza will be first and last.”
But Abu Hashish, the 65-year-old who yearns to return, declared there was little
on his mind but going back: “I have a plot of land and a two-storey house here,
which I'm offering for free to my Jordanian brothers.”
“I want to go home, even if I have to walk all the way.”