Suleiman is one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were expelled from their homes during the war The founding of the State of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent Arab-Israeli War, an exodus that Palestinians remember as the “Nakba.” For Suleiman, her family's journey marked the beginning of a life of displacement.
“It has been 75 years and we are still refugees,” she said from Burj el-Barajneh refugee camp on the southern edge of Beirut. “I wish we had died under the olive trees, instead of leaving like this and seeing what I saw.”
The scenes of nearly 1.9 million Palestinians displaced by Israel's assault on Gaza – many of them once again fleeing their homes on foot – serve to deepen a collective Palestinian wound that stretches back generations.
In Lebanon, the risk of the conflict spreading into the country raises the alarm. Israeli warnings of war, and cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, have put people across Lebanon's many divisions on edge.
Among them is Nadia Hamed, who cooks for Sufra, a Palestinian catering company run by women, located in the crowded camp.
She added that the strikes are “getting closer and closer, and their rhetoric is escalating.” He said. “I live in fear, because if war comes there will be no escape from it.”
Hamid's job helps support her family, but it also helps her keep Palestinian traditions alive for her four children. “I also tell them my parents’ stories, so they don’t forget.” She is worried about their future. The camp is a maze of crumbling walls and tangled cables. “There's really nothing for them here.”
Some Palestinians in Lebanon see their lives in exile as a warning of what could await Gazans in the future if calls by some Israeli officials for the mass displacement of people from the blockaded Strip become a reality. Some worry that Israel's war with Hamas will dampen hopes for a solution to the conflict that never ends.
Many described this war, broadcast live on their phones and across their televisions, as a painful reminder of why they hold on to a collective memory and why they pass it on through their families.
The Nakba is not far from Gideon Beaches. The Arabic word “shatt” is often translated as The term “diaspora” evokes a sense of dispersion – something that has been separated into parts and dispersed.
The United Nations says that about 5.9 million Palestinians in the Middle East, survivors of the 1948 exodus and their descendants, are registered as refugees. Many others live elsewhere in the world.
Shatat's parents gave him this name shortly after his pregnant mother fled their Palestinian village. He was born across the border in Lebanon in 1948.
Near the ruins of their village lies an Israeli town today. He said his parents left almost everything behind. “Maybe they didn't have the time.” Or perhaps many thought it would be temporary.
This life in limbo is perhaps most evident in the twelve refugee camps spread across Lebanon, where many of the country's estimated 200,000 Palestinian refugees remain stateless.
Their history in Lebanon is still fraught with danger. Palestinian militants were involved in Lebanon's civil war, which fought from 1975 to 1990 along sectarian lines. Palestinian groups effectively control several camps here today.
The fragile sectarian balance in Lebanon makes talking about granting refugees citizenship a sensitive matter. Palestinian refugees' rights, from work to property ownership, are severely restricted.
Saada Ghattas, a 54-year-old grandmother of two, said this fueled a constant feeling of uncertainty.
“It's like you're always carrying your bag and waiting,” she said. He said. “I swear I keep a bag at home for emergencies. We never know when something might happen and we just have to grab it and go.”
In her hilltop community in Dbayeh, northeast of Beirut, Ghattas area Others want to prepare shelters in case the conflict expands to Lebanon.
Relatives in Gaza, who are members of a small community of Palestinian Christians there, are taking refuge in a church that came under Israeli fire.
“People who are uprooted cannot return. This is what happened to our ancestors,” Ghattas said. “That is why, even though they die every day, they tell us that the same thing will happen to them if they leave.”
As the death toll in Gaza mounts, Ghattas and other Palestinians describe a desperate wait for word from relatives and friends in the Strip.
Israeli authorities say the current conflict began with a surprise attack by Hamas on October 7, which led to the deaths of 1,200 people in Israel, most of them civilians, and the taking of about 250 hostages. Israel responded with a military campaign to eliminate Hamas that has killed more than 26,000 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, the health ministry there says.
In the months that followed, Ghattas rarely turned off her television. I watched as Israeli bombing leveled neighborhoods and forced displaced people to live in a corner of Gaza.
Her neighbour, 86-year-old Boulos Al-Deek, recounted how she watched rescuers pull children from under the rubble, and burst into tears.
“My heart is exploding. May God protect us from what is coming,” he said. “What right of return can we talk about?”
Elias Habib, director of the Joint Christian Charitable Committee in the small Dbayeh camp, says it is important to preserve the memories of the few remaining survivors there of the 1948 dispossession.
Habib showed an identity document he found in his father's belongings. There is a stamp on the photo that says, in English, “Government of Palestine.”
Others described their family heirlooms: documents showing land ownership, house keys, small copper vessels.
“It's different when you have someone who lived it, whether the stories of the good days or the pain of the Nakba,” Habib said. “But nothing can make a person forget his roots and rights.”
“The wound is still open, because displacement continues,” he said.
Salah Daher's family formed a committee to trace their lineages And He collected old documents from the Palestinian village from which his parents fled in 1948. He ended up in Burj al-Barajneh after fleeing fighting in the south of the country. Lebanon before the Israeli invasion in 1978.
“We still have the key to my grandfather’s house,” he said. Daher, 62 years old: “My father kept it. He still had hope, until the day he died, of returning to his land. We will move forward with it.”
