My Palestinian Family Had a Home in West Jerusalem. Then Came 1948.

The Ottawa framework proposes a two-step solution: first, obtaining refugee buy-in to a peace process; and second, offering four choices for permanent residence: Remain in the current host country, move to a third country, relocate to the new Palestinian state, or for a limited number, return to Israel. Compensation and resettlement aid would accompany these options. In the subsequent Israeli occupation of the rest of Palestine and the transfer of Jewish Israelis to settlements illegally built in the West Bank, Palestinians have extracted similar resolutions that guarantee the right of displaced Palestinians to return to their homes in what will be the state of Palestine.

This approach, balancing the right to choose with political feasibility, offers a way to finally close one of the most painful chapters of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But it depends entirely on political courage. Until Israeli leaders are ready to acknowledge their role in the Nakba and allow for a real Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, the refugee problem will not go away. It will live on in memories, keys, and unfulfilled promises.

My father, having married my mother, a proud Jordanian from the city of Salt, returned to East Jerusalem. But after Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, and with no Palestinian higher education institutions at the time, he accepted my mother’s idea of emigrating to New Jersey, where her sister had been living. After studying and graduating in the United States, I returned to Jerusalem, and have since commuted between Jerusalem and Amman, working in journalism.