They took my home by brute force and made me a refugee and I want my home back, and I want to live in it in freedom and dignity. [...] Nakba to me is an earthquake, not by the forces of nature, but by the powers of evil. It is not instantaneous but lasting for decades.
Salman Abu Sitta, expelled from Ma'in near Beersheba at the age of ten, speaks to Al Jazeera about the Nakba and his life's work mapping the destroyed villages of Palestine.
Salman Abu Sitta was ten years old in 1948, when his family was driven from Ma’in, in the Beersheba district of southern Palestine, beginning a refugee journey that took him through Gaza, Egypt, Kuwait, Iraq, Yemen, Canada and Britain. Trained as an engineer, he devoted five decades to reconstructing the map of historic Palestine, producing the Atlas of Palestine and founding the Palestine Land Society.
In this Al Jazeera interview, given around the publication of his memoir Mapping My Return, Abu Sitta explains what the Nakba means to him and why he regards the right of return as non-negotiable: Palestinians, he says, do not have “aims” — they have rights.
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Quoted exactly as published by Al Jazeera. Visit the archive for the full testimony.
Al Jazeera