A group of Mehr News Agency correspondents visited an art exhibition that the Iranian photographer Wahab Ramzi collected its photos from the Palestinian refugee camp at the Museum of Contemporary Palestinian Arts in Tehran.
In 2023, Iranian photographer Wahab Ramzi went to the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. During this visit, he encountered the life stories, dreams, and laughter of the Palestinians and saw their family albums. This museum is the result of his photography of Palestinian people living in 4 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
Entitled 'Keys Older Than Israel', the gallery exhibits pictures that Ramzi captured from the refugee camps in Lebanon. The pictures depict the life story of Palestinian refugees who kept their homes' keys in the hope of returning to their motherland, Palestine.
Every picture in the exhibition tells the tragic story of Palestinian families who have been displaced by the Israeli regime in 1948.
What is most painful and surprising is the fact that the keys in these pictures of older than the fake regime of Israel.
Aisha; Palestinian woman in Lebanon
Among all the photos of the exhibition, the story behind one of the pictures grabbed everyone's attention. Aisha Khalid is an 84-year-old woman living in a Palestinian refugee camp in the Burj el-Shamali area south of Beirut. Aisha lives alone as she has lost her family members, sons, and her husband in recent years.
Aisha's house is full of Palestinian elements and symbols including the pictures of her martyred sons. Almost everything in Aisha's house is white except for the sequined flag of Palestine and cushions.
The pictures of her sons, the keys, and a handful of Palestine's soil are the most valuable possessions of Aisha by which she spends life these days.
At the age of 84, Aisha still hopes to return home. She is a perfect symbol of resistance, hope, strength and Patriotism. For her, nowhere is more suitable and good like her own country, Palestine.
ٍEven living in Bint Jbeil(Bint Jbeil is the second largest municipality in the Nabatiye Governorate in Southern Lebanon), Rashidiyya Camp, (the largest Palestinian refugee camp in the Tyre region of South Lebanon) has not satisfied her during the past 76 years.
She keeps the soil she got from the yard of her childhood house in Palestine in a little bottle. Although she is far from her country, this bottle gives her a sense that she can hold her country, Palestine, in her hands. When she misses her motherland she may smell the soil deeply with all her heart.
Aisha never back home since 1948
Aisha Khalid was born in Al-Khalisa village and lived there with her family until 1948 when the Israeli regime invaded Palestinian villages for the first time and forced the inhabitants to leave their homes and head to refugee camps in Lebanon.
Al-Khalisa was a Palestinian Arab village situated on a low hill on the northwestern edge of the Hula Valley of over 1,800 located 28 kilometers (17 mi) north of Safad. It was depopulated in 1948. Before Israeli occupation, Aisha's father had a big farm full of cows, sheep, and horses. They had a normal life and they held ceremonies with neighbors and relatives on every occasion and Eids(festival in Arabic).
It was late Elul (August–September on the Gregorian calendar) when Israeli troops invaded the Al-Khalisa. Being scared by the sounds of gunfire and shooting, the 13-year-old Aisha and her family forcibly left their home.
The most tragic part of the story is that Aisha's mother did not even turn off the stove for lunch as they thought they would return home again in a few hours. But they did not know that they would never back home even after decades.
Today, all family members have martyred or passed away and Aisha, the youngest member of the family lives alone with all those sweet memories in Al-Khalisa.
This story is not just the story of Aisha but it is the common sorrow and grief of the Palestinian nation for the past 76 years; the oppressed nation whose ultimate wish is to see their motherland even one time before death.
Palestinian Refugees
Most Palestinian refugees are Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed from the 78% of Palestine that Israeli regime was founded on in 1948 and their descendants. The mass expulsion of approximately 750,000 Palestinians (about ⅔ of all Palestinians) in 1948 was a deliberate and systematic act of ethnic cleansing., known to Palestinians as the Nakba (“catastrophe”).
Other Palestinian refugee categories include 1) Palestinians who fled their homes but remained internally displaced in occupied areas that became Israel, 2) Palestinians who were displaced for the first time when Israel’s military occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the 1967 war, 3) Palestinians who left the occupied territories since 1967 and have been prevented by Israel from returning due to revocation of residency rights, denial of family reunification, or deportation, 4) Palestinians internally displaced in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip since 1967, and 5) Palestinians driven from their homes during Israel’s genocide in Gaza in 2023-2024.
There are an estimated 9.17 million displaced Palestinians worldwide (as of 2021), according to the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights.
They include approximately 8.36 million refugees and 812,000 internally displaced persons.
Of those 8.36 million refugees, 2.3 million are in Jordan, more than 1.5 million are in occupied Gaza, 887,000 are in the occupied West Bank, 576,000 are in Syria, and 485,000 are in Lebanon.
Reported by Marzieh Rahmani