Bayt Nabala - بيت نبالا: Return home after 50 years, Part 2

You can find this artical in :
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/980512/1998051201.html
Memories of a 1948 survivor
Palestine, History, 5/12/1998



Using his cane, Abu Yousef shoved the green thorny grass aside to open a way for us. Occasionally, his cane would hit a stone that once was part of a house. He reminded me again that when he first returned to the village after the June 1967 war, he saw that the Israelis had removed all the stones in the northern edge of the village. He said that all the houses had been destroyed and that the Israelis spared none. Ruins of the village, we later found, were covered with the long, thorny, green grass.

"Are you serious. Do your really ask me if I wish to stay here? Of course I would. I'd rather die here and not return with you to Jalazoun," he said when I tried to test how close he felt towards his land. The question was more of rhetoric. But later, I tried to be more practical and asked Abu Yousef if he still believed rebuilding the village was possible. He said once the Palestinians are allowed back to their ruined villages, numbering more than 400, everything would then become possible. "Our people left Palestine and were scattered all over the world. We contributed to the modernization of a number of states, Arab and foreign alike. I do not see any reason why we couldn't build our own country."

Like most of the Palestinians, Abu Yousef does not have any magic way to restore his country. He feels torn between two conflicting concepts. On one hand, he supports the continued peace process with the hope that it would lead to better results. But he also feels hopeless on the other hand believing that the Israeli government does not aspire to real and genuine peace with the Arab world and the Palestinians. "Instead, Israel wants to rule over all our people and wants to spread its influence all over the Arab world."

Yet he does not believe he should tell his grandchildren everything he knows or feels. It is better to let them believe in the concept of peace, he said. "They should know that peaceful means are better to restore our rights provided they succeed. But I tell them too that if peace fails to restore their rights, national struggle remains the only option." Abu Yousef loves his grandchildren and says they are the most precious on earth. "It goes by the Arab saying: they planted, we ate. We plant and they eat. Just like what our grandfathers did to us. I always wish that when I die, all my grandchildren would have a peaceful and quiet life among themselves and with others. I wish they return to their land."