68 years later, the keys to Palestine

"We must do everything to ensure they never do return … The old will die and the young will forget," said David Ben-Gurion, 68 years ago. Everything was indeed done to ensure the Palestinians would never return. But if the old inevitably died, the young did not forget.

Ben-Gurion was mistaken. Generation after generation, the keys of the old houses in Palestine were passed from father to son, from mother to daughter. These keys have become the symbol of the Nakba, the “catastrophe” that fell upon the Palestinian people 68 years ago, when hundred of thousands of men, women and children were either killed or driven from their home and from their land.

But these keys are also the symbol of the return to Palestine. As illusive as it may seem today, this return is unavoidable, as long as these old rusty keys are in the heart of every Palestinian and of every self-respecting human being. Palestine is not an Arab or a Muslim cause, it’s a universal cause. The plight of the Palestinian people is a stain on our common humanity. As Nelson Mandela said: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

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