AL-BIREH, West Bank , 18 April 2004 — Although 56 years have passed since Fatmeh Al-Helo left her village of Lifta near Jerusalem after the outbreak of hostilities between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1948, not a day passes without her talking or thinking about the time there.

Apart from her memories, she still has the key to her house, some deeds in a closet and an identity card showing the family’s refugee status entitling them to reclaim their property — or at least be compensated for it one day.

Al-Helo, 76, always watches the news on television, and followed the recent meeting between US President George W. Bush and Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon in Washington closely.

“Neither Bush nor anyone else can give up our right for return,” she said. “My home is there,” she said, pointing south toward Lifta as she sat in her home in Al-Bireh, Ramallah’s neighboring city, and only 15 km from her village. She has lived in Al-Bireh since becoming a refugee in 1948.

Nevertheless, Fatmeh Al-Helo visited Lifta several times since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967. She and her family left it hurriedly in April 1948, shortly after armed Jewish groups massacred Palestinian villages in nearby Deir Yassin.

Her house has been turned into a school and Israeli Jews live in the other dwellings.

“It was a sad day when we left Lifta,” she says.

Surprisingly enough, she blames not only Israeli soldiers for her plight but the elders, and Palestinian and Arab leaders for causing a panic that started an exodus.

“We left behind many homes, our land full with trees and our souls,” she says.

According to United Nations figures, more than 700,000 Palestinians either left or were forced out of their homes during the 1948 hostilities that ended with the creation of the State of Israel on more than 70 percent of historic Palestine.

Only 200,000 remained in their homes and together with their offspring have since become Israeli citizens.

Today, UN figures put the number of registered refugees at more than four million, dispersed mainly across the occupied Palestinian territories and Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Al-Helo has nothing good to say about the US policy toward the Palestinians and Bush’s latest disclosures denying Palestinian refugees the right to return and recognizing Israel’s right to keep West Bank territory by retaining large settlements.

“America and Bush were always our enemy,” she said, adding: “Look what they are doing in Iraq. How can we trust the Americans?”

But Bush’s statements on the refugees do not seem to worry Jamal Shati, a member of the Palestinian Parliament from the Jenin refugee camp and chairman of Parliament’s Refugee Committee.

“We are not worried,” he says. “The refugee issue remains the mother of all issues, and no one has any right to give it up.”

Bush, he says, is trying to score some elections points and test the Palestinian response.

The response will come on May 15 as Palestinians prepare to mark the 56th anniversary of “nakba” or catastrophe — the day the refugee problem began.