Right to Return

Between 750,000 and a million Palestinians were forcibly displaced by Zionist militias in 1947-49, never to be allowed back. Hundreds of villages and towns were destroyed, thousands were killed, many of them in massacres that terrorized Palestine’s native population. Seventy-five years later, many of that first generation have died. But some are still alive to tell stories of the Nakba – Arabic for catastrophe. Fatima Abu Dayya, 82, was 7 when her family was forced to flee their village of Yibna, which was seized by Zionists in 1948. Yibna is 15 km southwest of Ramla. “My father took the key of our house along with some clothes and then we traveled on a donkey-drawn cart.