The Birth of Israel (30 of 32)

The Birth of Israel

The 1948 war is yet to end.
For all Israel's strength, its civilians still get killed by Palestinians.
And with their civilians dying, too, Palestinians believe that what they called the Nakba - the catastrophe of 1948- has never ended.
The current peace process, sponsored by President Bush, will fail, like all the others, if it cannot solve problems that are hard-wired to l948.
Partition is still on the agenda.
They need to fix a border between Israel and a Palestinian state.
Jerusalem is still claimed by both sides.
And Palestinian refugees await a future.

Until 1948, that was a bare hill on the edge of Bethlehem.
Now it's Deheishe refugee camp.
The original tents were replaced by permanent structures a long time ago, but there is no sense of permanence in the minds of the people who live there, because, for 60 years, they have effectively been in limbo.
The future of the Palestinian refugees is still one of the Middle East's great unsolved, politically toxic issues.
When the Palestinian camps were new, 60 years ago, Israel was absorbing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees and migrants.