Refugees in Our Own Land : Chronicles from a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Bethlehem

By Muna Hamzeh

Book Overview

This is a gripping account of what it is like to live as a Palestinian - as a refugee in your own homeland. Born in Jerusalem, Muna Hamzeh is a journalist who has been writing about Palestinian affairs since 1985. She first worked as a journalist in Washington DC, but moved back to Palestine in 1989 to cover the first Palestine Intifada - the war of stones. She then settled in Dheisheh, near Bethlehem - one of 59 Palestinian refugee camps that are considered the oldest refugee camps in the world.The book consists of a diary which Hamzeh wrote between October 4th and December 4th 2000, telling the story of the second Intifada. Facing the tanks and armed guards of one of the best-equipped armies in the world, the Palestinians have nothing. They fight back with stones. The anguish and terror that Muna and her friends face on daily basis is tangible. Who will be the next to die? Whose house will be the next to burn down? This deeply moving personal account brings to life the harsh realities of the Palestinian struggle. Refugees in Our Own Land is a look into the hearts and minds of Palestinian refugees. It is a tribute to the bravery of the Palestinian people, and a wake-up call to the world that has ignored so much of their struggle and their suffering.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0745316522
• ISBN13: 9780745316529
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Occupation Personified

Few are the works that have given the personal touch to what it means to be living under the ugliest forms of occupation of modern times: The Israeli Occupation of West Bank and Gaza. Ms. Hamzeh's work is one of such works. Her diaries give a face to the people who are suffering on a daily basis faced with what an Apartheid-like situation - those people are the Palestinians who are being dispossessed and forced to live as refugees in their own land. Ms. Hamzeh's diaries and the additional essays give the personal touch and the political situation in the form of Oslo agreement that is shown to be nothing more than a mask that was intended all along to squeeze the Palestinians out of their land.This book should be recommended reading to students of Politics who risk losing sight of what it means to live under Occupation while reading Academic oriented works, and this book should be displayed as a testimony by all peace loving people against Violence and Racism and pure Murder that is being applied against Palestinians on a daily basis.