Oral History: From the days of exile, A refugee from al-Majdal

Ibrahim Tawfeq Mattar
Date of birth: 6/12/1951
Deheishe Refugee Camp

Al-Majdal was a Canaanite city on the Palestinian coast, 25-km from Gaza and was called "Majdal Jad" after the Canaanite God of Luck. The city had a unique nice coastal climate and a beautiful vast landscape filled with oranges, grapes, and vegetable gardens. It was famous for its textile industry (i.e. student uniforms, bed covers, etc.) which distinguished the people of al-Majdal from all other neighboring Palestinian cities. My father was one of those textile workers, even for years long after the exile.

I am still proud of being from al-Majdal, and I used to follow the news about its people all over the world. I still remember those first days, when I was just a child of four-years. I was living in a one-room home just near the Haram al-Sharif in Hebron. I was always asking my mother how we came to live here? Where we are from? And why we do we live in these bad conditions compared to our neighbors?

My mother told me that my place of birth was Bethlehem, where my family used to live before living in Hebron. She told me that she left al-Majdal on foot during the night together with her uncle. They passed through the Naqab desert until they reached Bethlehem where the rest of the family used to live. Then my father followed her with another group from the small number of people who left al-Majdal through the West Bank. The majority, meanwhile, went to Gaza directly along the beach.

I entered first grade in Hebron. In 1959, we moved to Gaza by plane via Beirut in coordination with UNRWA. We waited in Gaza for three years until we received a small unit to live in Beach camp. I attended four schools in the Gaza Strip in just three years. I still remember how much I suffered from being transferred from one school to another even though I was always one of the best students. The last grade school I studied in was the New Gaza school.

When the war of 1967 started I was in tenth grade. One day, while we were writing final exams, we saw a squadron of planes flying towards Egypt through the Gaza sky. Warning sirens started and people went outside their homes, schools, and buildings in fear and distress. Outside the exam halls we saw Palestinian fighters in the street ready to resist. I still remember how my friends and I took shovels and dug trenches in the main street to help the fighters, until one of them came and asked us to leave and remain indoors.

At the end of that day, we received bad news from the al-Mantar front. Israeli tanks had crushed the Palestinian fighters' positions. People in refugee camps felt dejected. They were hoping to return to their homeland from which they had been exiled. My grandmother, for example, had kept all the documents related to our land ownership in al-Majdal, but after the bad news people gave up hope and many of them left by boat towards Egypt in order to avoid the Jewish revenge.

After the Naksa in 1967, students returned to school, but this time under Israeli occupation. Formal exams were taken and then we were transferred to the Palestine Secondary School, which had been established by student resistance movement. Demonstrations and many other forms of protest usually started in this school and then proceeded to the square with the memorial of the Unknown Soldier. One time, Israeli soldiers attacked the school and surrounded it. A big fight broke out between the students and the Israeli soldiers. The fight lasted until Israeli military tanks rushed into the school and soldiers beat the students inside the classes. Tens of students were injured and the school was closed for forty days.

In 1968, my father decided to leave Gaza for the West Bank. My youngest brother worked as a nurse in a hospital in Bethlehem. He left school early due to my family's bad economic situation. We all spent days feeling lost and isolated, suffering from moving from place to place. We never felt stable or secure. It was difficult even in Bethlehem to adapt the new situation and to integrate into the new society. It was also difficult to continue with new school programs. In Gaza the Egyptian curriculum was used while in the West Bank they used the Jordanian curriculum. I was determined to receive a high school certificate and when I received it in 1970, my tragedy started. My aim was to study in the university, but I was forced to study in a college where I graduated with a teacher's diploma in mathematics and sciences.

The years of exile, waiting in line for flour, sugar, and oil from UNRWA, have been humiliating. They remind us of the Palestinian past, which was lost and of the honor in which we lived in our villages. We just continue to hope to return home and to live in peace and security. Who knows what would have happened if our parents had refused to eat those free meals. For sure the refugee question of refugees would not have lasted.

Later, I traveled to Saudi Arabia where I worked for two years. Then I came back to continue my higher education at Bethlehem University from which I graduated with a bachelor degree in mathematics in 1979. I have since been teaching at UNRWA schools. I am married and have six children who are grown up now and enrolled in university. This year I received a master's degree in education.

We still think about the right of return. It is the right of the Palestinians who were forced to leave their land. We still have the documents that prove ownership of our lands dated before the establishment of the Israeli state.

With the peace process these days, I still believe that the land of al-Majdal is my grandfather's land, and mine, and for my children after me. I believe that I have the right to live on its earth as long as I still have the documents, which prove my right to live on this land. I will not accept any political solution that is not based on the right of return to al-Majdal.