The Palestinian refugee, Khazna Ali Yusif, was 14 years old in 1948 when she fled her homeland. She has not returned since. Phil Sands / The NationalDANNOUN, SYRIA // A year before Srur Ali’s father died, he gave his son a bundle of papers, wrapped in a pillowcase and a plastic bag, with instructions that they were a priceless inheritance and must never be lost.
Aged 15 at the time, Srur, a Palestinian refugee living in Syria, gave little thought to the contents but promised to protect them. For the next half-century the documents were hidden away.
Yesterday, Srur Ali, now 65, and with sons of his own, allowed them to be shown publicly for the first time. The fragile, yellowing papers are title deeds to hundreds of acres of farmland in Palestine, issued to his father by British mandate authorities before 1948. Since then, the land near the city of Safad, has been part of Israel.
“My father always believed that if he kept the paperwork he would one day be able to return to his property,” Mr Ali said. “He had faith in the papers, even when he knew he would not go home, he gave them to me believing that I would be able to use them.
“Now I’m old and I’ve not been able to do anything except pass them to my son, with the same instructions my father gave to me and the same hope they will be useful to him, or to my grandsons, one day in the future.”
Alongside old cooking pots and traditional Palestinian farmers’ clothing, the papers formed part of a small cultural display in a makeshift tent in Dannoun Camp, 25km south of Damascus, one of the first areas in Syria settled by Palestinians who fled their homes during the Nakba, or “catastrophe” ...READ MORE
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