Visiting Palestine

Yacoub Odeh was the guide for Middle East Children's Alliance's twelve-day tour through Palestine/Israel. He became a friend who told me and showed me things I know I will never forget. At age 67, Yacoub seems to carry with him the whole history of modern Palestine. And that is above all a history -- and ongoing experience -- of terrible loss.

On day one, Yacoub took us to Lifta, the village in West Jerusalem where he was born and where he lived until 1948 when he, along with his family, his neighbors and approximately 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes by the militias that would soon become the Israeli military.

After we walked down the steep path into what had been the center of the village, someone asked Yacoub how much he remembers living there as a child. He said emphatically, "I remember it ex-act-ly. Ex-act-ly," and then turned and looked at a fig tree nearby and told us how his older cousins would climb the tree when the figs were ripe and toss them down, while he and his brothers waited eagerly below to catch some. Across from us was the spring the villagers used for their homes and lush, terraced gardens and orchards -- overgrown and untended, but still there

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