All that’s left is a key: Palestinians fleeing Israel’s bombs dream of home
Al Jazeera
The keys are light and small, but the longing for home that they hold is a driving force for Palestinians in Gaza.
Deir el-Balah, Gaza – A year of war, displacement and horror has not made the people of Gaza forget the homes they had to leave behind to save their families from relentless Israeli bombing.
Al Jazeera spoke to three women who are now living in a refugee camp near Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah. They fled with their families, but held on to the one object that unifies all Palestinians deprived of their homes and lands: the keys to their houses.
No longer the large iron keys that their forebears took with them when they were ethnically cleansed in the Nakba of 1948, these small, modern keys are just as important to a dispossessed people as ever.
Abeer al-Salibi, 37, lives in the crowded Deir el-Balah displacement camp and still carries the key to her house, though it now lies in ruins.
She, her husband and their seven children live in a tent, a far cry from the home they built over 17 years of toil.
