Report from the Mideast: A human drama
Beirut
The Arabs who can’t go home again
BEIRUT – Waiting by the radio for news from Jerusalem, where Egyptians and Israelis were wrangling over the future of the West Bank, Sabri Moustafa dreamed of going home.
Like most of the 17,000 Palestinians in Burj el Barajneh, the sprawling refugee camp that he directs, Moustafa has dreamed of little else since 1948.
But like most of the refugees throughout Lebanon, Moustafa would not go to the West Bank regardless of the outcome of the Jerusalem talks.
"No, not to the West Bank," he said, shaking his head. "To my village, Tarshiha, to my farm."
Tarshiha is in Israel, deep in Israel – official, 1948 vintage, kosher Israel.
And that means Moustafa, like many others here, may be a long time dreaming of home in the cinderblock maze called Burj el Barahneh.
Dropped somewhere from the current international equations on a "comprehensive solution to the Palestinian problem" is the fact that the West Bank and Gaza are not home for most refugees. They were driven out of villages in the north of Palestine, from the orange groves around Haifa, Jaffa and Acre.
Though they hope for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the River Jordan's West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, the interest of many lies primarily in obtaining a more convenient base from which to carry on the fight against Israeli control of what were once their real homes.
"You're stronger from your own land, from your own home," said Husseim Shadi, 58, in his dark little barbershop in Burj el Barajneh. "The way it stands now, our fighters (Palestine Liberation Organization commandos) have no base. If they get out of Israel after an operation they're killed by the Arab armies."
In a home nearby, with a poster of PLO leader Yasir Arafat hanging on the wall like an icon, Ibrahim Jershi, 40, said he might leave Lebanon for the West Bank.
"It's part of Palestine," he said. "But I'll have my gun with me and I'll get back to my village, Ghabsiyeh."
Ghabsiyeh is 12 kilometers from Acre. Once again, deep in original Israeli territory.
Estimates here vary as to the number of Palestinians who might be expected to leave Lebanon if a West Bank-Gaza state resulted from the Middle East peace negotiations.
But no one is predicting that all will leave. Few expect more than 50 percent to emigrate. Many Palestinians and Lebanese say that only 10 to 20 percent of the Palestinians here would be attracted by a West Bank-Gaza state.
"Look," said a Lebanese named Yusuf Hashim. "Here, you have a business, you have a home, you have lived here for 30 years. Are you going to leave this for a place you have never seen, where you have nothing, just because it has a name ‘Palestine?'"
There are about one million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. There are at least three times that number scattered across the Middle East, Europe and the Americas.
It is probable that there will be Palestinian refugees and hence a "Palestinian problem" for many years to come.
As they freely admit, the Palestinians are too weak and too dispersed to win back their land by force without the aid of the Arab governments in the nations surrounding Israel.
Counting on that aid is like counting on nothing at all.
Since 1948, the worst wounds the Palestinians have received came from their Arab brethren. The first Palestinian slain in the fight for his homeland was killed by a Jordanian soldier.
