These are the first two installments of a series.

Our strength is in the camps
In the first of a series, a PLO representative turned academic argues that the refugees remain at the core of Palestinian national identity

This morning exactly 20 years ago a terrible massacre was unfolding in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. Some of us lost friends there, some relatives, but all Palestinians come together annually to commemorate those who died, as well as the thousands killed at the Tal al-Za'atar camp in 1976 and the many massacres that made us refugees in 1948 - such as Deir Yassin, Abu Shusha, Tantura, Eilaboun, and Husnaynia.

How many Palestinians became refugees, and where are they now? The story of the Palestinian refugees is not simply unknown, it is concealed. [read more]

No peace without an end to exile
In the second of a series, a Palestinian academic says that any Middle East deal which ignores the rights of the refugees will be rejected

A few weeks before the al-Aqsa intifada began in September 2000, an extraordinary public meeting took place at Aida refugee camp, Bethlehem. There were others at Palestinian refugee camps all over the region. A cross-party British parliamentary commission was actually asking the refugees what they thought about their future, peace and the right of return. They were taking the testimony of dozens of groups of refugees, popular committees, old people, children. This was unprecedented, for during the last 10 years of the Oslo process, the issue of the refugees had been comprehensively removed from the negotiating table - many thought for good. They were instead to be resettled either in a new state or in the host Arab countries, against their will and international law. [read more]

----------

thanks to Gush Shalom