Hope is a victim of Gazan’s life of flight

Abdullah Abu Massoud, 77, is the patriarch of a Palestinian refugee family spanning five generations.

Five generations of a Palestinian refugee family, the Abu Massouds, pose for a portrait. From left to right (standing): Bassama Abu Massoud, 72; her daughter Hanaa, 50; Hanaa's daughter, Abir, 33; AbiShow more

JERASH CAMP, JORDAN // The life of Palestinian Abdullah Abu Massoud has been marked by flight.

As a boy, he had to fled the war that broke out over the birth of Israel in 1948. He found refuge in the Gaza Strip but when Israeli forces captured it in 1967, he fled again, to a refugee camp in Jordan. He has been there ever since. .

Now 77, Mr Abu Massoud is the white-haired patriarch of a refugee family spanning five generations.

“Fifty years have passed without a step forward,” he said. “We don’t belong here.”

The plight of Palestinians uprooted by Israeli-Arab wars is one of the world’s longest-running refugee crises. A large number of refugees could resettle in a Palestinian state, if one existed, but such a solution now seems remote.

And now, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are being displaced again by regional conflicts, including civil war in Syria. But the eyes of the world are no longer on them.

“We are dealing here with a community that has essentially reached a crisis of existential nature,” said Pierre Kraehenbuehl, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which helps displaced Palestinians.

Abdullah Abu Massoud was born in a Bedouin encampment in what is now Israel. When Israel was created, ike more than 700,000 uprooted Palestinians, his family walked to Gaza, which was then run by Egypt. .

In his 20s, Mr Abu Massoud married Bassama, an Egyptian, and settled in Gaza. In 1967, the Israelis captured it and offered transport to Jordan. Fearful of what the Israelis might do to those who stayed, in April 1968, the Abu Massouds and other displaced Gaza Palestinians boarded a lorry bound for the Jordanian border. From there, they took buses to an area near the town of Jerash where UNRWA was setting up a tent camp. Bassama remembers her feet sticking out of the tiny tent while she slept.

Under previous US proposals, a Palestinian state created from lands Israel captured in 1967 could become home to refugees like the Abu Massouds. In addition, an agreed number of refugees would be allowed to return to Israel and others could opt to stay in their host countries.

But Palestinians wanted Israel to accept moral responsibility for the plight of refugees, while Israel feared he dilution of its Jewish majority by large numbers of returning Palestinians. .

There have been no serious negotiations since 2009, when Benjamin Netanyahu became Israel’s prime minister. Continued Israeli settlement expansion has made a partition deal more difficult.

Today, 5.3 million Palestinians and their descendants are registered with UNRWA in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, making them eligible for health and education services, but the UN says their refugee status continues down the generations through protracted conflicts.

Alaa Abu Awad, 29, grandson to Abdullah and Bassama, has never set foot in historic Palestine, the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. A tailor by trade, he clings to an idealised image of Gaza. He has a Palestinian flag — “the flag of my homeland” — on the wall of his shop in Jerash camp. Many of the 2.2 million UNRWA-registered Palestinians in Jordan now have citizenship and fewer than 30 per of displaced Palestinians live in UN camps.But Alaa he fears he will never leave Jerash camp.

Most Palestinians in Jordan received citizenship as descendants of refugees from the neighbouring West Bank, which was under Jordanian control for two decades, until 1967. But the descendants of Palestinians from Gaza are still classed as temporary residents. They number more than 150,000 but are barred from owning property taking government jobs.

In Lebanon, refugees cannot access public health or schools and are barred from most skilled professions. In Syria, which once welcomed them, the civil war has displaced about 400,000 of the nation’s 560,000 Palestinians.

In Palestinian-run areas of the West Bank and Gaza, descendants of refugees have the same rights as others. But poverty keeps many of them in camps, where resentment against the Palestinian ruling elite festers.

In Jerash, the younger women now veil their faces, indicating a more fundamentalist version of Islam is taking root. The women say being covered head to toe also offers protection in the crowded camp.

Bassama, wife of Mr Abu Massoud and mother of seven, expects to be buried in the camp’s rundown cemetery.

“Gaza is gone. Palestine is gone,” she said. “It’s over. For 50 years, they are saying, peace, peace. We are tired of the words.”

* Associated Press