We left behind the most fertile fields in the area. Just months before the Nakba I was tending the land daydreaming about my future. My father worked that land. My father's father did before him and so many generations before.
A nine-year-old when Burayr was besieged and depopulated in 1948, he recalls the farmland his family had worked for generations and the return they never stopped expecting.
Omar Abedelal was nine years old when he, his family and their neighbors were displaced from Burayr, a village northeast of Gaza known for its fertile fields, as Zionist militias closed in during 1948. The family had been preparing to harvest the wheat that year; instead they joined the exodus south, and Abedelal has lived ever since as a refugee in Gaza City.
He gave this account, at the age of 82, to the late Gaza academic and writer Refaat Alareer, who recorded the memories of Nakba survivors for a 2021 feature first published by Politics Today and republished by the Palestinian Information Center. Alareer, editor of Gaza Writes Back, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in December 2023.
Sources
Source
Quoted exactly as published by Palestinian Information Center. Visit the archive for the full testimony.
Palestinian Information CenterConnected in the archive
4 connected records4 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
the village this testimony is about — 1 record
- Burayrبرير
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: village: "Burayr" → Burayr (Gaza)
named in this record — 3 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Gaza Cityغزة
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Omar Abedelal was nine years old when he, his family and their neighbors were displaced from Burayr, a village northeast of Gaza known for its fertile fields, as Zionist militias closed in during 1948. The family had been preparing to harvest the wheat that year; instead they joined the exodus south, and Abedelal has lived ever since as a refugee in Gaza City.
- Refaat Alareerرفعت العرير
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: He gave this account, at the age of 82, to the late Gaza academic and writer Refaat Alareer, who recorded the memories of Nakba survivors for a 2021 feature first published by Politics Today and republished by the Palestinian Information Center.
- Refaat Alareerرفعت العرعير
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: He gave this account, at the age of 82, to the late Gaza academic and writer Refaat Alareer, who recorded the memories of Nakba survivors for a 2021 feature first published by Politics Today and republished by the Palestinian Information Center.
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Omar Abedelal — Testimony.” Testimonies, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/omar-abedelal-burayr.- MLA
“Omar Abedelal — Testimony.” Testimonies, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/omar-abedelal-burayr. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-omar-abedelal-burayr, title = {Omar Abedelal — Testimony}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/omar-abedelal-burayr}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }