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

An orange grove in Beit Hanoun. (George Azar)

On the window sill of her Central Park West apartment, Inea Bushnaq keeps a miniature orange tree and an olive sapling. They remind her of her first home, a house on the western edge of Jerusalem overlooking an olive grove.

In 1948, fighting between Zionists and Palestinians sent bullets through the windows of the house. Bushnaq was nine years old at the time. "I could sense that my parents were frightened," she recalls, "And to a child that was more alarming than the bullets."

The next day the family packed two suitcases and moved to Nablus, to the house of an uncle which had become a refuge for other family members fleeing Haifa and Tulkarem. "We stayed in Nablus for about six months always expecting to go back. For a while my father continued working at the Arab College in Jerusalem, where he taught, visiting us on weekends."

When it became too dangerous to travel or to keep students at the college, the family moved to Jordan and then to Beirut and Damascus finally landing in London where Bushnaq's father worked in the Arabic section of the BBC. The family eventually moved back to the Middle East, to Amman, Jordan. Finishing her education in England, Bushnaq still held out hope of a return to Jerusalem but after the 1967 war she decided to move to New York, "I just gave up."

Bushnaq travels to Palestine frequently. "Every time the walls of Jerusalem's Old City come into sight I have the same reaction: overwhelming delight mixed with sadness," she said. "Something about the clarity of the air, the way the sun slants on those stones, the smell and the sound, the echo when you speak, has an impact as powerful as a physical blow. I think that those of us who left unwillingly in 1948, we are all plagued with this painful nostalgia." Three years ago, Bushnaq visited the house in West Jerusalem for the first time. It is an Israeli nursery school now and a whole neighborhood has replaced the olive grove.

Sixty years have passed, but Bushnaq feels that the injustice done to the Palestinian people in 1948 needs to be acknowledged and addressed if there is to be peace. "Palestinians paid a huge price for what the Germans and the Russians and others in Europe did to the Jews. Against our will, our land was partitioned and half the population displaced so that Israel might be a safe haven for world Jewry. A first step would be for Israel and the West to acknowledge what was done to the Palestinians. In the silence about this history it becomes easy to demonize the Palestinian resistance to being totally occupied by Israel and it becomes reasonable to tell Palestinians they have no right of return after 60 years while Jews anywhere in the world are welcome to return to Israel after 2000 years. American tax money has been very generously supporting Israel for decades. Americans need to be made aware of the facts underlying the violence. Maybe then the U.S. would exert pressure for a peace acceptable to Palestinians as well as Israelis."

In the meantime, Bushnaq is left with her miniature trees, the visits to East Jerusalem and an unsettled feeling. "Like all displaced people," she said, "one fits in neither country 100 percent."

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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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