Global Policy Forum

50 years after they took flight, the fate of 3.7m Arab refugees
is now the biggest hurdle to peace

By Ewen MacAskill

Khalil al-Maqdah holds the key to the Middle East conflict in his bedside locker. Wrapped in a cheap plastic shopping bag are documents from the last days of the British mandate in Palestine showing him to be the rightful owner of a house and land in what is now Israel.

Now said by his family to be 110 years old, MrMaqdah lives close to the Mediterranean in a shabby house in the warren of alleyways that make up the Ein al-Hilweh refugee camp at Sidon, south of Beirut. Ein al-Hilweh and the other camps in Lebanon hold the most militant Palestinian refugees. If Israel and the Palestinian leadership ever sign a peace agreement, these are the people who have to be persuaded to accept it.

Mr Maqdah's documents, brown with age and held together with clear tape, carry the stamp of the British crown's land registry office and his black, inky thumbprint. This certificate of registration, number 140,008, confirms that in 1946 he bought a three-bedroomed house and adjoining land in the village of al-Ghabissiyeh, near the northern coastal town of Akko (formerly Acre), in Galilee.

Mr Maqdah, who worked for the British drilling for water, also has a claim on his late wife's home in a nearby village, al-Menshiyyeh.

Mr Maqdah clings to the document, which is still legally binding, as proof of his right to return to Galilee. But Israel, during negotiations on the final shape of a settlement, expressed its determination not to recognise the right of return of the refugees scattered round the Middle East, insisting that allowing an influx of so many Palestinians would be suicidal for the Jewish state.

If Mr Maqdah and his family - and all the other refugee families holding similar documents - can be persuaded to compromise, peace is possible. If they decide they will settle for nothing less than a return to the site of their former villages, any peace settlement is a long way off.

Switching reluctantly from the Hizbullah channel, where he was keeping up with the latest incidents in the Palestinian uprising, Mr Maqdah recalls the traumatic events that led to his exile in 1948 during the first Arab-Israeli war.

"The Jews arrived after the second world war. I laughed because I was not used to seeing men and women walking down the road together. The Jews told me they would take our land."

He said he fled "because the Jews began occupying our lands, killing our kids. We did not have weapons at the time. The English did not even allow us to carry a small knife." Mr Maqdah crossed the border into Lebanon at the height of the fighting. "I thought I would be away for a week or two and then go back."

Fifty-three years later, he and 3.7m others live in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. Does he think he will see his village again? "I hope so. I hope my death is in Palestine, not here."

Mr Maqdah left Israel as a widower with eight sons. Today, five generations of his family live in the camp and the family has grown to 180.

The love of homeland and hatred of Israel have not lessened with successive generations - the younger members are violently passionate about realising Mr Maqdah's dream. His grandson, Munir al-Maqdah, 41, was born in the camp. "I love my grandfather. We smell Palestine through my grandfather," he said.

Munir has only ever seen a video of al- Ghabissiyeh, which has been in ruins since 1948. In theory, the family could move back and rebuild. But that option is not available to most refugees, whose homes have been taken over by Israelis or flattened to make way for high-rise blocks and shopping malls. Mr Maqdah's other village, al-Menshiyyeh, is buried under a military airstrip.

Munir is soft-spoken and could pass for an Islamic scholar or poet. In fact, he is a fighter with Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement who left school at the age of 10 to train as a commando for raids into Israel.

According to Jordanian and Lebanese newspapers, he is top of the Israeli wanted list. He is also wanted in Jordan where, four months ago, he was sentenced to death in absentia for terrorism.

Ein al-Hilweh has a high concentration of guns and men experienced in fighting. The Lebanese army has the camp surrounded, controlling access in and out. No cement, cable wire or any other material that might make for permanent homes is allowed in.

Munir is commander of all the Fatah gunmen in Lebanon. Although nominally under the leadership of Mr Arafat, he publicly opposed him for signing the Oslo agreement with Israel in 1993 and is even more vehemently opposed to the compromises discussed between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the last month.

Under the proposed peace deal, only a limited number of refugees would be allowed to return to Israel: the Israelis have so far indicated a willingness to accept about 100,000 but that figure could rise, perhaps to a ceiling of about 300,000. The remainder would resettle in those countries where they live at present, or return to the Palestinian Authority, setting up new homes (and even cities) in the West Bank or Gaza. Compensation would be paid for lost property.

Munir is not interested in compensation, resettlement in Lebanon or a move to the Palestinian Authority's West Bank or Gaza. His home, like 98% of Ein al-Hilweh's 80,000 refugees, is in Galilee: that is their soil and they want it back.

"I swear it is not a dream. It is going to happen sooner or later. As they (the Israelis) left like rats from south Lebanon, they will leave the holy land. They should leave it and save their lives before they go back in body bags," he says.

If the Israelis were prepared to give them back their land, it would not mean the end of Jews in the region, he says. "Before '48, we used to live with one another. If we go back to the way it was before, then we would be neighbours. We would have no reason to fight them."

The Israelis have tried several times to assassinate Munir. He says that if he is killed, he expects his sons to take up the fight. His nephew Ahmed represents the fourth generation. He is 18, still at school, well-educated, speaks good English and his rhetoric is even more hardline than his uncle's. "I refuse to go to Gaza or the West Bank. I want only to go to my village," he says.

"If Arafat makes peace with the Jews, it will be bad. We can't live with the Israelis. We can't trust them. They have to leave Israel and go back to where they came from. All my friends think like me."

He says he might go to America, Canada or Europe to complete his education. A sign of wavering? "No. I can go away for a bit but not for good. If I do not come back, the Palestinian issue will be forgotten."

There are Palestinians who are prepared to admit they could be flexible. But there was no willingness to be so by anyone interviewed at the Ein al-Hilweh camp.

In the plastic bag with the documents of ownership, Mr Maqdah Sr has a photograph of himself surrounded by the fifth generation of his family, of whom Abdullah, nine months, is the youngest. The children are proudly holding the documents. The dream, unreachable as it seems, is passed to the next generation.

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