Kristen Ess - Many refugees from Tel Asafi first fled to Fawwar Refugee Camp in southern Hebron in 1948, thinking they would be gone just a week. They have ended up a lifetime in Bethlehem camps. Abu Yasser lives among the cement blocks of one of them. He is over 80 years old.
On his office door he has written the exact day that he was driven from his village of Tel Asafi. It was a Thursday, the first day of Ramadan.
“What is written is my memory of what happened in Tel Asafi, the day we left, the day Israel took it. I wrote 17 June 1948. We left without anything. We ended up in Bethlehem where we are living to this day and awaiting our return to Tel Asafi. It was t first day of Ramadan, Thursday, the 17th of April 1948. They had heavy weapons, we had no choice. But they said it would only be a week.
“Maybe everyone knows that we want to go home, that we all want to return. Why not? We are tired of the injustice. It’s wrong. Human beings want to be free, to live in freedom. But this word, idea, isn’t happening. But we still hope.
“I was 22 years old when we fled. And there’s sun here too, but you know the sun in my own town, my own home, is better. The sun is Tel Asafi is special. We would sleep, relax, we were happy. I was with my friends, my dear friends and now there are still friends and family here. But this sun in Bethlehem; is for Bethlehem. I’m waiting to return to my home. I don’t want anything, just that. I want to live there and I will be entirely happy. I remember things as a child does now. After 70 years old, Sigmund Freud says that one retreats to childhood. Now I’m 83 years old, but I feel as a child. I dream of my home.”
A Palestinian woman, Makbula Asaar, is one who lives within the current Israeli boundaries. She is a photographer who has documented the destruction 60 years ago of over 400 Palestinian villages.
“My name is Makbula Asaar. For five or six years I’ve been photographing the destroyed Palestinian villages, the overtaken towns. The photos are on the internet and are for the public to see. In this way it is possible for the refugees from these villages to see again their homes, where they come from, and what has happened.
“This exhibit that I began about two years ago, I tried to represent the Palestinian villages exactly as they are now. They go to the camps here, the refugees, and to the camps and refugees in Lebanon. My idea was simple: just to show them their homes, where there villages are now. Where they were, how they were. This is, was, Palestine, yet Palestinians cannot come to see their own homes. So I tried through photographs. And then I tried to get to even more villages, village to village, to show everything. And so then these photos can go on the internet. It’s sometimes the only possible way for a refugee to see.”
It’s been 60 years. The Israelis are celebrating, Bush will be joining them.
Kristen Ess - Many refugees from Tel Asafi first fled to Fawwar Refugee Camp in southern Hebron in 1948, thinking they would be gone just a week. They have ended up a lifetime in Bethlehem camps. Abu Yasser lives among the cement blocks of one of them. He is over 80 years old. 
