All my life, my exiled parents had told me about the tragedy of Palestine. Then, when I was in my early 20s, my family moved back – and I saw it with my own eyes
At 22 years old, I set foot in my country for the first time. My parents were Palestinian, but in 1970 they had gone into exile. We had been living in Cyprus after fleeing the war in Lebanon. Now, a new era of reconciliation had arrived. A year or so after the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) were signed, we were finally allowed to go back. It was exciting to return to our ancestral home after all these years. Our extended family in the Galilee, especially my grandparents, were overjoyed, and we were swamped in a tide of love. I was thrilled to finally return. I wanted a country. I wanted not to feel like a foreigner any more. This was a dream come true. The years of statelessness were behind us. But going home was much harder than I imagined, for all of us.
My father struggled to find his bearings in Israel, which had changed so drastically in his years away. He had grown up in a rural village in Galilee, but had gone into exile due to his political work and involvement in a Palestinian resistance movement. He had also published a book, The Arabs in Israel, detailing the harsh fate of Palestinians who remained after the occupation. In Beirut, and then in Cyprus, he went to work for the PLO, and became a close associate of PLO leader Yasser Arafat. On our return, Arafat pressed him to take a post with the newly established Palestinian Authority.
