PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | Page 114

it in my name, nor in that of my wife: my property
remained in the name of the seller; if he had died, his
family would have inherited “my” land. Luckily, in
May 2009, my daughter married a Palestinian from the
West Bank and got Jordanian nationality by marriage,
and I was able to put the house in her name.
Many professions are forbidden to refugees from
Gaza. The laws that apply to foreigners are applied to
Gazans: that is how it is. 40 We are not allowed to own
a car or a truck if we use it to make a living. The result
is that many people work on the black market and, if
they get caught, they get a warning or have to pay a
fine. Sometimes, however, the authorities take pity on
us: even if, as a Gazan, we have to pay to be treated
in the clinics and public hospitals, we can ask for the
treatment to be taken care of by a special fund from
the royal court. My wife, Allah yerhamha, God rest her
soul, was able, thanks to a doctor who took pity on
her, to have an eye cancer treated at the King Hus-
sein Medical Centre, but she did not survive a relapse
in 2017. Today, access to this centre is extremely rare,
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Memories of 1948
except in very serious cases and the sick are generally
sent to the public hospital, Al Bashir, where patients
buy their medicines themselves in private pharmacies.
How do they cope when they have no money? The only
thing left is the zakat 41 or charitable organizations to
help them.
Seen from the Gaza Camp, where I have been living
for 15 years, the peace accords signed in Camp David
in 1978, and in the Wadi Araba in 1994, 42 did not look
serious. I never believed in them, and from the top of
my minbar, on Fridays, I said so: the Israeli government
has never intended to stop settlements, they do not
want to live with us, they want our lands, but empty
of its inhabitants. They do not want us Palestinians to
exist beyond the boundaries that they set for us. More-
over, they pay no attention to international laws and
continue to occupy and create settlements in Palestine.
Whether one is for or against it, it is reality. We can
only hope that an educated and humanitarian man will
appear, to find a real and just solution, like Saladin the
Kurd 43 did in the twelfth century.