Palestinian refugees

Rowaida Abu Eid tries Palestine VR, an app that offers virtual tours of six regions in the West Bank and Gaza. (Screenshot of a a PIPD video)

New VR app circumvents Israel’s travel bans, takes viewers across Palestine

Palestine VR offers virtual tours across the West Bank and Gaza, allowing viewers to ‘see the reality on the ground’ themselves.

By Jaclynn Ashly November 13, 2019

Yaffa is where my great grandfather was killed in 1948, and where my grandfather spent his childhood and adolescence. Like most Palestinian cities, Yaffa is de jure banned to most Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza by Israel. (Mariam Barghouti)

Returning to Yaffa, but only as a ‘tourist’

It is hours — days, weeks, maybe some months if we’re fortunate — before my permit expires, when I would have to make my way back to the West Bank, or else Israel will deem my presence in my own ancestral city ‘illegal.’ By Mariam Barghouti If I were given a dollar for the number…

By +972 Magazine October 9, 2019

Palestinian fishermen prepare their nets near the sea in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on March 10, 2019. (Abed Rahim Khatib/ Flash90)

What do Palestinians in Gaza really think about the Israeli elections?

On the eve of the elections, four young Palestinians in Gaza open up about their thoughts on Israeli political parties, whether they think there’s hope for change, and what life is like under siege. By Yuval Abraham Muhammad The electricity cuts out at 2pm in Gaza, but Muhammad has charged his phone in advance so he’ll have enough battery…

By +972 Magazine September 12, 2019

Latest

Omar Odeh helped establish a follow up committee dealing with the affairs of Palestinian refugees from Syria who fled to Gaza. (Mohammed Al-Hajjar)

Displaced again: Palestinian refugees from Syria struggle to survive in Gaza

With surging unemployment rates and high rents, Palestinian refugees who fled the Syrian war for Gaza are struggling to climb out of poverty. Like many Gazans, they hope to leave the strip in search of a better life. By Amjad Yaghi In mid-2012, Egyptian police arrested Omar Odeh for violating the conditions of his residence permit and overstaying his…

By +972 Magazine August 21, 2019

A photo of my Palestinian grandmother, Najwa Qattan. (Courtesy of Nooran Alhamdan)

My Palestinian sitty embodies the humanity Israel tries to deny us

My grandmother is not just a beacon of warmth and love. Not just my first best friend. She is a survivor. She is the compass that points to justice. By Nooran Alhamdan My grandmother was my first best friend. As soon as I’d be dropped off at her house, almost daily, the hotheaded and spoiled…

By +972 Magazine August 20, 2019

Palestinians in the city of Ramle surrender to Israeli forces during 1948 war. (Eldad David/GPO)

How I learned to stop worrying and acknowledge the Nakba

For more than seven decades, Israelis haven’t been able to come to terms with the consequences of the Nakba. To do so, they’ll have to confront the hard truths about 1948, and shed their moral superiority. By Michal Talya The first time I ever heard a testimony about the Nakba was nearly two decades ago from…

By +972 Magazine August 8, 2019

On Easter Monday in the displaced Palestinian village of Iqrit, residents dance around the town's church, April 21, 2014. (Activestills.org)

Palestinians are holding weddings, baptisms, burials in villages destroyed by Israel

Third-generation survivors of the Nakba are returning to the churches in the villages Israel destroyed in 1948 to hold religious ceremonies. By Suha Arraf Just over two weeks ago, Khaled Bisharat, son of famed journalist and author Odeh Bisharat, was married in a church in the village of Ma’alul. It was a wedding like any other, apart…

By +972 Magazine July 30, 2019

Illustrative photo of Palestinian refugees fleeing during the Nakba.

Don’t wait for Israeli archives to prove what Palestinians already know

Israeli authorities are deliberately concealing historical documents to undermine evidence of the state’s dark and violent origins. And the world is still falling for it. The village of Safsaf (“willow” in Arabic) appears on page 490 of the newest edition of Walid Khalidi’s All That Remains, a seminal book that catalogues 418 Palestinian communities that were…

By Amjad Iraqi July 7, 2019

Israeli security forces guard as Jewish Israelis tour the Palestinian side of the old city market in the West Bank city of Hebron, June 15, 2019. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)

Confederation can’t answer the most important issue in Israel-Palestine

Any framework that comes to replace the two-state solution must aspire toward decolonization, and accept that Zionism and full civic equality are irreconcilable. Changes on the ground over the past decade have allowed Israel to consolidate its rule between the river and the sea. While the final nail in the two-state coffin was hammered long…

By Henriette Chacar July 2, 2019

Palestinian families who fled to Jordan during the Six-Day War return to the West Bank through Allenby Bridge under an Israeli agreement with the Red Cross, July 18, 2019. (Teddy Brauner/GPO)

The Israeli academics who helped design Palestinian emigration

Newly-uncovered documents reveal how Israel established the ‘Professors Committee’ in the days following the occupation to devise policies to pacify the Palestinians and make them leave the West Bank and Gaza permanently. Mere weeks after nearly tripling the size of Israeli controlled territory in the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel enlisted teams of academics in the country to find ways to encourage Palestinians…

By Edo Konrad June 18, 2019

PODCAST: The other two-state solution

The two-state solution may be dead but that doesn’t mean the dream of a Palestinian state is too. The +972 Podcast takes a deep dive into confederation. Listen here: iTunes/Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Spotify Is the two-state solution really dead? Who knows if it ever will be. But an equitable one-state solution isn’t a given, and…

By +972 Magazine June 14, 2019

Palestinian citizens of Israel take part in the Return March, held at the destroyed village of Khubbeiza, to mark Nakba Day, May 9, 2019. (Mati Milstein)

PODCAST: The other Palestinian march of return

The +972 Podcast heads to the destroyed village of Khubbeiza to hear what Nakba Day means to different people, including Palestinians internally displaced in Israel. Every year for over two decades, thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel have marked Nakba Day by marching to the site of a different village that was depopulated and destroyed…

By +972 Magazine May 15, 2019

Palestinians stand inside a makeshift train, symbolically heading to the homes and lands they left in 1948, as they commemorate the Nakba day in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, on May 15, 2016. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

The story of my family’s Nakba

How strange is it to see the events that defined the lives of three generations of my family as a mere paragraph in a book? How strange is it to discover that your family’s lived experience is considered merely a footnote on the pages of history? By Nooran Alhamdan It is a sweet July night,…

By +972 Magazine May 13, 2019