To interview Wilhelmine Baramki contact the IMEU at 714-368-0300 or info@imeu.net

Palestinians fleeing their homes in 1948. (UN)

In May of 1948, 14-year-old Wilhelmine Baramki and her family packed a few of their bags and fled their west Jerusalem home. For several months prior, Zionist gunmen had been shooting at the bus that carried her father to and from work and the occasional bullet came through the windows of their home. It became too dangerous for her father to go to work. In the face of increasing violence, the family moved in with their aunt in a convent in Jerusalem's Old City.

"Our home is still there but we can't go back to it," said Baramki. "We thought we were going temporarily. We locked all the doors, and marked which key went to which door. We just took the necessary things because we thought we were just leaving for two or three weeks and then we'd come back."

However, the weeks passed and still they could not return home. Instead, the family decided to spend three months in Beirut. Before leaving, despite her family's fears for her safety, Baramki's mother snuck back to their home to wash, iron and fold the family's laundry, so that they would have clean clothes upon their return, and to maintain a sense of normalcy amidst the uncertainty of the future.

Three months turned into a year and a half, after which they moved to East Jerusalem, then occupied by Jordan, where Baramki still lives today. She was not able to see her home on the Israeli side of Jerusalem until after the 1967 war. Four Jewish families had moved in. "It's very sad to stand in front of your home and not be able to enter," she said. "All our clothes, furniture, everything we had was in there and the Israelis came and took it. Even today the initials of my father, Anton Khoury, are on the façade."

Baramki believes Palestinians should be treated the same as any other people. "We are all refugees," she said. "We have to get our homes back. Everywhere in the world refugees get their homes back, but here we have nothing."

The American people are key to the solution, Baramki believes. "Americans can do something to help. If America wants, it can change the situation." Until that time, the Nakba continues. "All our families are dispersed," she said. "We have sad memories of our childhood and sad thoughts of our future."

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The "Nakba" ("catastrophe" in Arabic) refers to the destruction of Palestinian society in 1948 and the exile of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and homeland. It is estimated that more than 50 percent were driven out under direct military assault by Israeli troops. Others fled in panic as news spread of massacres in Palestinian villages like Deir Yassin and Tantura. Nearly half the Palestinian refugees had fled by May 14, 1948, when Israel declared its independence and the Arab states entered the fray.

Israel depopulated more than 450 Palestinian towns and villages, destroying most while resettling the remainder with new Jewish immigrants without regard to Palestinian rights and desires to return to their homes. Israel still refuses to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and to pay them compensation, as required by international law.

Today, there are more than 4 million registered Palestinian refugees worldwide. The Nakba is a root cause of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel's denial of its expulsion of the Palestinians and seizure of their homes and properties for Jewish use continues to inflict pain and to generate resistance among Palestinians today.

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