For Dalal, 1948 was the year she was forced to walk hundreds of kilometres on foot with her mother and two brothers, Nimr and Naim to reach safety.
Dalal, Naima and Amina Nassar are three sisters who lived through a horrific journey of forced exodus, destruction and death since 1948 and today, indicating how endless the Nakba has been for the Palestinians throughout the decades.
The three sisters are Palestinian refugees from Julis in northern occupied Palestine. Their family was forced to flee their town in 1948 to the Gaza Strip, like more than 700,000 other Palestinians, by Zionist militant groups, according to official Palestinian data.
For Dalal, 1948 was the year of the Nakba, when she was forced to walk hundreds of kilometres on foot with her mother and two brothers, Nimr and Naim, to reach the nearest safe place in the Gaza Strip.
"The situation was as if we were experiencing the Day of Judgment (...) Crowds of people escaping from the death on foot and others riding donkeys and camels, while children ran in front of their families as the sound of bullets fired by the Zionist gangs towards us," Dalal recalls to The New Arab.
The 84-year-old mother of six never forgot one scene during that time. She describes how men and women lay dead in the streets, shot by Zionist forces while they were trying to escape. No one managed to save them or know who they were.
"Everyone was trying to survive (...) No one had weapons during the exodus. We were and still are defenceless women, children and helpless elderly people," she remarked.
Before the Nakba in 1948, Dalal said, "We lived a quiet, simple life." She lived in a mud house and her family owned land on which they planted legumes and vegetables. They had a cow from which they got milk for the children and made cheese to eat.
Despite the passage of time, Dalal vividly remembers details of her life with her neighbours and friends, when they used to gather daily to play in front of their houses, and the long walks they all took together to fill some galloons with water.
"I miss farming the land with my mother during the farming seasons," she said. "Sometimes we grew lentils and chickpeas, and in another season, we grew tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, cabbage, and many vegetables and fruits."
"But," Dalal added, "Everything was destroyed. Our lives became hell after we were forced to flee to the Gaza Strip, where my family lived in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, sheltering in tents that did not protect us from the harsh winter cold or the oppressive summer heat.
Dalal continued to live the tragic reality with her family in light of the lack of all necessities of life. She recalls, "Living in tents is the height of tragedy, without protection and privacy for you and your family (...) We felt naked in front of each other and felt ashamed all the time, even when we had to relieve ourselves inside tents."
Dalal and her five-member family then tried to deal with the "new difficult reality" imposed on them, believing that they would return to their town, from which they had been displaced, after weeks or months.
But many years passed, and neither Dalal nor any of the Palestinian refugees were able to return to their homes, denied their inalienable right to return.
No comments:
Post a Comment