MONOGRÁFICO / MONOGRAPHIC

7
70 Years of ‘Catastrophe’: Can
Israel thwart ‘Right of Return’
for Palestinian Refugees?
70 años de «catástrofe»: ¿puede Israel frustrar el
«derecho de retorno» para los refugiados palestinos?

Romana Rubeo*; Ramzy Baroud**

doi: 10.5944/reec.35.2020.25217

Recibido: 4 de julio de 2019

Aceptado: 17 de octubre de 2019

*Romana Rubeo: es una escritora y traductora con sede en Italia. Tiene un Máster en Lenguas y Literaturas
Extranjeras de la Università degli Studi dell’Aquila. Está especializada en traducción audiovisual y periodística.
Rubeo escribe en italiano e inglés y es colaboradora habitual de Al Jazeera English. Datos de contacto: E-
mail: [email protected]
**Ramzy baRoud: Ramzy Baroud es un periodista americano-palestino, asesor de medios de comunicación,
columnista internacional, Editor de la Crónica Palestina (1999-presente), antiguo editor del London-based
Middle East Eye y Editor-Jefe del The Brunei Times. Desde un prima académico ha impartido clases de co-
municación de masas en la Universidad Curtin de Tecnología de Australia, en el Campus Malaysia. Es autor
de cinco libros y co-autor de otros muchos. Su último volumen es The Last Earth, a Palestinian Story (Pluto
Press, London, 2018). Sus libros han sido tarducidos a muchos idiomas, incluyendo el francés, turco, árabe,
coreano, entre otros. También es el autor de las publicaciones Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of
the Israeli Invasion (Cune Press, Seattle, 2003); The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s
Struggle (Pluto Press, London, 2006); My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press,
London, 2010). Datos de contacto: E-mail: [email protected]

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70 Years of ‘Catastrophe’: Can Israel thwart ‘Right of Return’ for Palestinian Refugees?

Abstract
The US is currently following a blueprint of a strategy in which it advances Israel’s “vic-
tory”, while imposing conditions of surrender on defeated Palestinians. (Pipes, 2016) One
of the main targets of this new policy is Palestinian refugees, scattered in their millions
across Palestine and the Middle East. But the ‘Nakba’, starting 70 years ago - and all of its
dire consequences, since then - is a concept that is so deeply entrenched in the hearts and
minds of most Palestinians to this day. Thus, the refugees and their insistence on their
Right of Return are the main, if not the only, obstacles before the US-Israeli plot.

Keywords: Nakba; Palestinian Refugees; Israeli Apartheid; Deal of the Century; UN-
RWA; Right of Return

Resumen
En la actualidad, los EE.UU. están acometiendo un proyecto estratégico por el cual se
presume la «victoria» de Israel, a la vez que impone condiciones de rendición en los
palestinos derrotados (Pipes, 2016). Uno de los objetivos cruciales de esta nueva política
son los refugiados palestinos, dispersos por millones tanto en tierra palestina como en
el Oriente Medio. El Nakba, iniciado hace 70 años, y todas sus funestas consecuencias
desde entonces, se revela un concepto hondamente vertebrado en las mentes y almas de
la gran mayoría de palestinos hasta el presente. Por ello, los refugiados y su insistencia
en su Derecho de Retorno constituyen el principal (y casi único) obstáculo en el complot
EE.UU-Israelí.

Palabras clave: Nakba; refugiados palestinos; apartheid israelí; acuerdo del siglo;
UNRWA; derecho de retorno

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1. Introduction
To be a Palestinian refugee means living perpetually in limbo - unable to reclaim what
has been lost, the beloved homeland, and unable to fashion an alternative future and a
life of freedom, justice and dignity.
How are Palestinian refugees to reconstruct their identity that has been shattered
by decades of exile, when their powerful tormentors have linked their own existence
and repatriation to their very demise? According to Israel’s logic, Palestinian refugees’
mere demand for the implementation of the internationally sanctioned Right of Return
is equivalent to a call for “genocide” (Bauer, 2013).
According to that same faulty logic, the fact that Palestinian people live and multiply
is a “demographic threat” to Israel (Alpher & Shikaki, 1999). When Israel and its friends
around the world argue that Palestinian people are “invented”, not only are they aim-
ing to annihilate their collective identity, but they are also justifying in their own minds
the continued killing and maiming of Palestinians, unhindered by any moral or ethical
consideration. (Curtis, 2011)

2. The Not-So-Accidental ‘Nakba’

Unlike what Israeli military historians often claim, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in
1947 - 48 (and the subsequent purges of the native population that followed in 1967,
coupled with what historian, Ilan Pappe, refers to as ‘incremental genocide’) was no acci-
dent. It has been part of a long-drawn and carefully calculated campaign that, from the
very start, was the main strategy at the heart of the Zionist movement’s ‘vision’ for the
Palestinian people.
This is how Palestinian historian, Walid Khalidi describes the joint Zionist militias’
attack on one of Palestine’s most populous and strategically important coastal cities,
Jaffa:
“By the end of April, the combined Haganah-Irgun offensive had completely
encircled Jaffa, forcing most of the remaining civilians to flee by sea to Gaza or
Egypt; many drowned in the process.” (Khalidi, 1984, p. 310)

Khalidi elaborates:
“The Palestinian collapse (at all fronts) resulted from bad leadership, totally
inadequate civil defense arrangements, and military disparity in planning,
numbers and firepower. By the end of April, the Palestinian community was badly
mangled. Tens of thousands of refugees were on the trek over land, with thousands
more in transit at sea.” (Khalidi, ibid.)

This tragedy has eventually grown to affect all Palestinians, everywhere within the
borders of their historic homeland, from the Galilee in the north to the Naqab in the
south, and from Akka to Gaza at the opposite extremes of the Palestinian coast. Tens of
thousands of refugees joined up with hundreds of thousands more at various dusty trails
throughout the country, growing in numbers as they walked further, to finally pitch their
tents in areas that were then meant to be ‘temporary’ refugee encampments. Alas, these
became the Palestinian refugee camps of today, starting some 70 years ago, not only in
Palestine itself, but throughout the Middle East region.

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70 Years of ‘Catastrophe’: Can Israel thwart ‘Right of Return’ for Palestinian Refugees?

None of this was accidental. The determination of the early Zionists to establish a
‘national home’ for Jews at the expense of the country’s Palestinian Arab nation was
communicated openly, clearly and repeatedly throughout the formation of early Zionist
thought, and the translation of those well-articulated ideas into physical reality. (United
Nations, 1990, p. 34)
“We must expel the Arabs and take their place,” wrote Israel’s founder, military leader
and first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, in a letter to his son, Amos, on October 5,
1937. That was over a decade before Plan D went into effect, which saw the destruction of
the Palestinian homeland at the hands of Ben Gurion’s militias. (Gurion, 1937)
“Palestine contains vast colonization potential,” he also wrote, “which the Arabs nei-
ther need nor are qualified to exploit.” (ibid.) This clear declaration of a colonial project
in Palestine, communicated with the same kind of unmistakable racist insinuations and
language that accompanied all western colonial experiences throughout the centuries
was not unique to Ben Gurion. He was merely paraphrasing what was, by then, under-
stood to be the crux of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine at the time. (Gurion, ibid.)
As Palestinian professor, Nur Masalha, concluded in his book, the Expulsion of the
Palestinians, the idea of the ‘transfer’ - the Zionist term for “ethnic cleansing’ of the
Palestinian people - was, and remains, fundamental in the realization of Zionist ambi-
tions in Palestine.
“Palestinian Arab villages inside the Jewish state that resist ‘should be destroyed
[..] and their inhabitants expelled beyond the borders of the Jewish state.’
Meanwhile, ‘Palestinian residents of the urban quarters which dominate access to
or egress from towns should be expelled beyond the borders of the Jewish state in
the event of their resistance.’” (Masalha, 1992, p. 178, quotation from Y. Slutsky)

The lack of remorse with which Zionist leaders carried out their violent deeds in
those years continue to define the Zionist Israeli view of Palestinian refugees up to today.
One of those Zionist military leaders, who later became the Minister of Defense in the
Israeli army, was Moshe Dayan. Dayan, known for his violent bloody conquests against
Palestinian refugee population centers for many years, attempted clumsily to confront
the moral accountability of his violent campaign. Yet, he failed miserably:
“ 'I must ask,' he said in a speech years after the establishment of the state of
Israel, “Are [we justified] in opening fire on the [Palestinian] Arabs who cross
[the border] to reap the crops they planted in our territory; they, their women,
and their children? Will this stand up to moral scrutiny ...? We shoot at those
from among the 200,000 hungry [Palestinian] Arabs who cross the line [to graze
their flocks]; will this stand up to moral review? Arabs cross to collect the grain
that they left in the abandoned [the term often used by Israelis to describe the
ethnically cleansed] villages and we set mines for them and they go back without
an arm or a leg ... [It may be that this] cannot pass review ...” (Morris, 1999, p. 275,
quotation from Moshe Dayan)

However, even after stating the reality with a surprisingly candid depiction, Dayan
remained unhinged, so self-assured with the moral superiority of his action: “But I know
no other method of guarding the borders, [otherwise] tomorrow the State of Israel will
have no borders.” (Morris, ibid.)
Ben Gurion, Dayan and others comforted themselves with a unique kind of moral
philosophy that was a blend of sheer lies and a destructive sense of self-pity. They seemed

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to lack time, patience or even the mere desire to truly reflect on the inhumanity of their
actions or, however begrudgingly, recognize the humanity of their Palestinian victims.
With that moral failure in mind, it was no surprise that, as a direct outcome of their
systematic and unbridled war crimes, a massive tragedy was culminating; a tragedy that,
as of this date, has crossed the 70-year threshold, without remedy or even an honest
attempt at one.Of the nearly one million Palestinians who were made refugees then, a
large number descended upon the Gaza Strip. The arrival of well over 200,000 people,
all at once, disturbed the established demographics of the tiny Strip and opened the door
wide for hostility towards the vulnerable refugees, who had no other option but to become
exploitable to the highest degree imaginable. They had no other mechanisms that would
ensure their survival. Some stood in endless lines to receive rations and handouts from
the Quakers, the first international organization that arrived on the scene to help the
refugees in Gaza. Others offered their services to the relatively wealthy families in the
cities, and were used as maids and cheap laborers serving the nomadic tribes. They often
received a small meal as pay for their long hours on the Gaza farms, one that a mother
or father would split among their children. One meal a day was no longer frowned upon,
for some families were hardly so lucky. The Gaza scenario was repeated everywhere else.
The United Nations was yet to come to the refugees’ rescue. In fact, the plight of the
refugees was not yet at the center stage of political discussions, as war hostilities and
political maneuvering were still not concluded. There was also ample - although ideal-
istic - hope that the refugees would be repatriated, thus there was no pressing need to
establish a long-term regime of humanitarian aid. Sadly, the refugees exile lasted much
longer than anyone had expected or hoped, save the Zionists who had no intention to
allow the refugees back to their homes. (Al Husseini, 2007, pp. 435-464)
The Arabic term for that tragic period is the ‘Nakba’, meaning the ‘Catastrophe’, which
almost exclusively refers to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, coupled with
the destruction of the Palestine homeland in 1948. On May 1, 1950 - roughly two years
after the ‘Nakba’- the UN General Assembly created the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency (UNRWA), a ‘temporary’ organization to provide urgent aid for the refugees. The
temporariness of UNRWA’s mission was predicated on the assumption that Palestinian
refugees would soon, as per international law, be allowed to return to their depopulated
towns and villages. UNRWA replaced an ad hoc agency, the United Nations Relief for
Palestine Refugees, a group that operated with no staff or budget, but volunteers from
the Red Cross and various religious organizations. When UNRWA’s first aid workers
made their way to the refugee camps, harrowing images confronted them and, by exten-
sion, the world, with a reality they described as ‘unbearable’:

“We went to see the refugees – thousands of men and women exposing their
suffering in a mood of utter despair beneath a gray winter sky. Children by the
hundreds, most of them half-naked – shoeless, shivering – conveyed the depth
of their misery in gestures that were more eloquent than words. The parents
showed us the camp, they showed us the holes in the ground – deep, like wells
– (trenches that were built by the British and later the Egyptian army) where
children were living in total darkness, piled one on top of the other on the icy
rock.” (Butt, 1995, p. 138.)

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3. The ‘Irredeemably Flawed’ Deal of the Century

Seventy years have passed since the ‘Nakba’ and, neither has Israel taken responsibility
for its action, nor Palestinian refugees received any measure of justice, however small
or even symbolic. The original number of refugees has grown, multiplying by several
fold since then, and Palestinian refugee camps have expanded in size as well. With the
passing of time, these ‘temporary’ camps became permanent structures of a permanently
exiled nation.
Worse still, Israeli western benefactors, led by the United States government, con-
tinue to support Israel’s ‘right’ to maintain its strange amalgamation of an ever confused
identity, that of being both Jewish and democratic, simultaneously. The Jewish identity of
Israel was designed, from the very start, to provide the intellectual rationalization for the
expulsion of the Palestinians. Maintaining that identity simply meant the rejection of the
Palestinian refugees’ ‘Right of Return’, as enshrined in international and humanitarian
law. The insistence of the racial categorization of what Israel is meant to represent has also
served to protect the undeniably racist character of the state of Israel. (Davis, 2004)
Israel’s own self-tailored claims aside, the UN Resolution 194 of 1948 has provided
the legal and political framework to protect Palestinian refugees’ rights. Since then, the
UN has, as a matter of course, confirmed that right, which continues to be ‘inalienable’,
urgent and wholly just. Res. 194 resolves,
“that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their
neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that
compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return ...”
(A/RES/194)

All US governments since 1948 have supported Israel’s dismissal of the ‘Right of
Return’ and, following the Oslo accords of 1993, the emphasis on that right have shifted
dramatically, from discussing the need to ‘repatriate’ the refugees to the historically mar-
ginal topic of ‘compensation’, which was hardly the priority for most Palestinian refugees.
(Brynen, 2018) No other US administration, however, has gone as far as that of Donald
Trump. Through a well-organized political campaign involving US Ambassador to the
UN, Nikki Haley, (2016-18) and Trump’s top adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the
US is hoping to redefine the entire discourse pertaining to Palestinian refugees. (Marteau
& Almohamadi, 2018)
Trump’s so-called “Deal of the Century”, purportedly aimed at delivering the coveted
peace in the Middle East, is proven to be but a mere US-Israeli-Arab stratagem to rede-
fine the nature of the ‘conflict’ altogether, and relegate issues that Palestinians consider
essential in their fight for rights, freedom and justice, in favor of Arab-Israeli political
normalization and economic integration. (Gardner, 2018)
Other early indications regarding Trump’s ‘peace initiative’ suggest that the ‘deal’
intends to remove Jerusalem entirely from any future discussions or final agreement
between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The relocation of the US Embassy from Tel
Aviv to Jerusalem, in addition to Trump’s own assertion that “Jerusalem is off the table”,
confirm this assumption. More relevant to this article, another component of Trump’s
deal is to ‘resolve’ the issue of refugees without their repatriation and without heeding to
international law, especially Resolution 194.

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Various news media reports have exposed an elaborate American plot to downgrade
the status of refugees, to argue against UN figures indicating their actual numbers and to
choke off UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for the welfare of the refugees, from badly
needed funds.
This US-Israeli design has been in motion for years. The Trump administration has
already drastically cut funding to UNRWA. (George, 2018) The organization, which pro-
vided tents and basic relief to Palestinian refugees as early as 1950 has morphed in term
of its mission and budget, as it is now the main provider of educational, health, and social
services across Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, benefiting an estimated
5.4 million Palestinian refugees. The UN agency operates nearly 700 schools, where about
500,000 children receive basic education, in addition to 150 primary health clinics, where
doctors see more than 9 million patients every year. (Statistics UNRWA, 2019)
With the American decision to defund UNRWA, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian
refugees are reeling under a worsening humanitarian situation. Additionally, Gaza’s
already high unemployment has taken a massive hit when UNRWA decided, under US
pressure, to fire a large number of its Palestinian workforce. (Humaid, 2018)
US State Department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, described UNRWA’s opera-
tional model as “irredeemably flawed”. (Wroughton & Sawafta, 2018) She is wrong,
of course. What is truly flawed is her country’s misconstrued understanding of the
Palestinian situation and the never-ending pipedream that a peace deal can provide a
minimal amount of justice, without addressing the core issue of the so-called ‘Palestinian-
Israeli conflict,’ that being the Palestinian refugee crisis and the ‘Right of Return’ for
Palestinian refugees.
Trump’s actions targeting the ‘Right of Return’, however, were not developed in a
political or intellectual vacuum. They are part and parcel of a rooted campaign that goes
back decades, one that carried the ultimate aim of discounting Palestinian refugees as
a central factor in whatever future arrangement Tel Aviv and Washington have for the
region. The seeds of that campaign were, expectedly, planted by Israel itself. However,
the acquiescence of the Palestinian leadership and the hypocrisy of the international
community have also helped embolden the Israeli and American efforts, leading to the
current plot to finally demolish the ‘Right of Return’ as a real, tangible possibility.

4. ‘Politics of Denial’
The truth is that ‘The Right of Return’ and the terrible plight of Palestinian refugees have
never been taken seriously by Israel, despite the clarity of international law regarding the
matter. Masalah describes Israel’s attitude as “The politics of denial”. (Masalha, 2003)
Indeed, Israel denies the very existence of the Palestinian people in their historic
homeland, refuses to acknowledge any moral accountability for the current misery of
the refugees or its direct role in creating the crisis, in the first place. Needless to say,
it pays no heed to the Right of Return. That is not all that Israel denies. It also denies
Palestinians’ right in a sovereign and independent state, while its mouthpieces insist that
there is no such a thing as a Palestinian nation. The bizarre idea that Palestinians are an
‘invented’ people has been circulating among pro-Israel US political elites for decades.
(Curtis, 2011) All evidence to the contrary, of a Palestinian culture, history, art, litera-
ture, historic political aspirations and a unique sense of identity is of no consequence to
Israel and its allies.

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The fact that Israel has approached the ‘peace talks’ and negotiations with the
Palestinian leadership while guided by that ‘politics of denial’, speaks volumes about
the futility of that process, at the outset. What should have been perceived as a pressing
issue, the Palestinian refugees’ Right of Return was relegated to a ‘final status negotia-
tions’, which has never actualized.
The Palestinian leadership bears much responsibility, as well, for downgrading the
importance of the refugees and their legally-protected rights. The Arab defeat in the 1967
war - also known as the ‘Naksa’, or the ‘Setback’ - proved to be a turning point (Dana,
2016), not only because it altered the physical reality on the ground, but also because it
scaled back Arab and Palestinian political expectations. Before the Naksa, hopes were
high that all of Palestine would be recovered and the refugees would finally be allowed
to return. After the war, which witnessed massive American military support to ensure
the complete defeat of Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian forces combined, the discus-
sion began to slowly shift. The demand for the return of all of historic Palestine was
replaced with the humble demand of the recovering of ‘territories’ occupied in the last
war; the refugees became a mere humanitarian crisis needing a humanitarian solution.
(S/RES/242, 1967)
The true psychological “setback” - a second Naksa even - was the sad reality that
the Palestinian leadership has truly internalized that defeat as it approached the subject
of negotiations with Israel, first in Madrid in 1991 and then in Oslo. The Oslo Accords
of 1993 was celebrated as a groundbreaking achievement on the road to attaining the
elusive Middle East peace. But since the premise, that of a defeated Palestinian nation
negotiating its own surrender with the much more powerful Israel, was faulty in the first
place, the ‘peace process’ ultimately collapsed. That final failure, highlighted starkly at
Camp David in 2000, paved the road for the emergence of Benjamin Netanyahu and his
most emboldened far-right coalitions, which continue to rule Israel to this day.
Since then, the ‘peace process’ has served the role of political mantra, with no real
objectives in mind, aside from perpetuating the illusion that peace was at hand, and
further empowered the US position as a ‘peacemaker.’ The Right of Return was not even
a subject worthy of discussion to those involved in the charade. It was lost among the
massive dossiers of endless details that accompanied Oslo, and all related agreements, or
attempted agreements: the Paris Protocol in 1994, Hebron Protocol in 1997, Wye River
in 1998, Camp David in 2000, and so on.
With international aid pouring in, the Palestinian leadership, as represented in the
Palestinian Authority, was trapped in its own false sense of importance, prestige and
massive financial perks. (Said, 2004) The PA, which was busy policing Palestinians
under Israeli Occupation, had neither the will, interest or the mere desire to fight for the
rights of millions of Palestinian refugees throughout the region.
Israel’s ‘politics of denial’ has, thus, infected the Palestinian leadership as well as the
international community, the only guarantor of international law. Thanks to Israeli and
American joint efforts at the United Nations, and the failure of Palestinians and their
Arab allies, the Right of Return - once designated as ‘inalienable’ - was transformed into
a sentimental subject rarely discussed - save in the symbolic ‘international day of solidar-
ity with the Palestinian people’ once a year. (Qafisheh, 2007)
Susan M. Akram, an Associate Professor at Boston University School of Law, writes:

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“Although at its core a political problem, the Palestinian refugee crisis is also a
problem of legal distortion: Palestinian refugees fall into a legal lacuna that sets
them outside minimal international protections available for all other refugee
groups in the world.” (Akram, S. M., 2002)

This was not supposed to be the case. The status of Palestinian refugees was purposely
governed by a separate regime that was not placed under the 1951 Refugee Convention
and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) mandate. This special regime,
based on unique principles enunciated in several UN resolutions, led to the creation of
UNRWA and the United Conciliation Commission on Palestine (UNCCP). (Akram, ibid.)
The logic behind this specific arrangement was motivated by international consensus
and desire to keep the issue of Right of Return ‘vital’ and a top international priority so
that the refugees are finally ‘reptriated and compensated’, as per UN Res. 194.
The language here is of essence. Palestinians have historically emphasized the con-
cept of “Repatriation”, as opposed to “settlement in a third country”. The idea of “com-
pensation” is even more controversial, for Palestinians have long fought any US or Arab
proposals to accept money in exchange for their permanent exile.
Rex Brynen, Professor of Political Science at McGill University, writes:
“Initially, many Palestinians were wary about too much focus on compensation for
fear that it would be put forward as an alternative to return”. (Brynen, 2018)

The political culture that has resulted from the ‘peace process’ has changed all of that,
at least from the Palestinian leadership point of view. For Palestinian refugees, however,
there is little evidence that suggests their willingness to squander their historical rights
and their Right of Return. (Karmi, 2011)
Israel is, of course, fully aware of the historical dynamics that led to the birth of
UNRWA and, taking advantage of the complete US foreign policy capitulation, it is
eager to change the status of Palestinian refugees entirely. In January 2018, Netanyahu
launched an Israeli campaign to gradually allow the UNHCR to replace UNRWA as the
caretaker of Palestinian refugees. (Rasgon, 2018) If Israel, with US backing, succeeds in
doing so, UNHCR will be mandated to ‘settle’ Palestinian refugees outside of Palestine,
while UNRWA and its unique mission that kept the Right of Return a ‘vital’ priority will
be eventually marginalized and entirely relegated.

5. Conclusion
With the blind support of the anti-Palestinian US administration, Israel is orchestrating a
sinister campaign to make Palestinian refugees vanish through the destruction of UNRWA
and the redefining of the refugee status of millions of Palestinians. By denying UNRWA
urgently needed funds, Washington wants to enforce a new reality, one in which neither
human rights, international law nor morality are of any consequence.
What would become of Palestinian refugees seems to be of no importance to Trump,
his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and other US officials. The Americans are now insolently
watching, hoping that their callous strategy will finally bring Palestinians to their knees, so
that they will ultimately submit to the Israeli government’s dictates.
The Israelis want the Palestinians to give up their Right of Return in order to get “peace”.
But the joint Israeli-American “vision” for the Palestinians basically means the imposition

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of apartheid. The Palestinian people, however, as quisling as their leadership may be, will
never accept this. 70 years of exile and continued resistance have taught us this much.

6. Bibliography
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Al Husseini, J. (2007) The Arab States and the refugee issue: a retrospective view. Israel
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Butt, G. (1995). Life at the crossroads: a history of Gaza. Nicosia, Cyprus: Rimal
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