Arabs still remember lost Palestinian villages

[Scurrilous]

Organisation works to commemorate the more than 400 Palestinian villages destroyed during creation of Israel.

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""Every time I come back here I cry," says Ramadan Farajallah as he contemplates the scattered ruins of the village he once called home.

The 77-year-old fled to Gaza with his family 60 years ago. Today he holds Israeli citizenship, from his marriage to an Arab Israeli woman, making him one of only a handful of former residents who can visit the village.

Farajallah is accompanying a group of some three dozen Israelis and foreigners led by the Israeli body Zochrot. With the old man are his grandchildren, who chase each other through waist-high wildflowers.

The organisation works to commemorate the more than 400 villages destroyed -- and around 750,000 Palestinians exiled -- during the birth of the Jewish state, an event referred to by Palestinians as the "Naqba," or catastrophe.

The group has hiked up a slope of tall grass and yellow flowers, carrying wooden signs to mark the remains of the Arab village, near the border with the Gaza Strip.

"We have posted more than 100 signs, and all of them have been removed," says Eitan Bronstein, the director of Zochrot, which means "memory" in Hebrew.

"I would not be surprised if the signs are gone when we come back this way later on today," he adds."

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