MIDDLE EAST:SEVERAL SCORE Palestinian men, women and children whose families lost homes in west Jerusalem walked through the neighbourhoods of Katamon, Talbiyeh and Bakaa yesterday in peaceful commemoration of the catastrophe, the naqba, which befell their people 60 years ago at the time Israel was created.
Dressed in black, they gathered beside Israel's national theatre and donned black T-shirts printed in white with the words "Naqba Survivor" on the front and "This is My Home" on the back. Although many were not from these neighbourhoods - or even Jerusalem - to these Palestinians, this event symbolised the continuing dispossession of the Palestinian people.
As we walked uphill towards the Belgian consulate, Beatrice Habesch, now 80, talked about her eviction. She said her family had Jewish friends and tenants before the battle for Jerusalem began in December 1947.
"One day in March [1948], two men and a woman, our tenants, came to our house. After they were served coffee, they told my mother to prepare the suitcases. They asked us to leave for two or three months . . . We told them to use the stores of rice, coffee and flour in the basement if we did not return after a month. We moved to the Casa Nova [a convent in the old city] where we lived in one small room. Every family had just one room. We stayed there until we went to Amman. My father had the best printing press in Jerusalem."
When we reached the corner, she threw her arms out and cried: "There's my house, there's my house." Across the street stood a square, stone house built early last century, a typical home of prosperous Palestinian professionals and merchants.
As we walked the route, elderly, middle-aged and young Palestinians pointed out family homes, two or three storeys tall, with arched windows and red-tiled roofs.
Lisa Amintov, an Israeli retiree who belongs to a group advocating the establishment of a secular democracy for both sides, said she had joined the walk to show solidarity with Palestinians.
Nahla Asali was 10 when her family was compelled by heavy bombardment and constant gunfire to leave their house. "Look, it has been turned into several flats," she observed. "We were five children and our parents."
They left after a massacre by Israeli irregulars of Palestinians at a village called Deir Yassin. "We went to Damascus, where we stayed for two years before returning to East Jerusalem," then under Jordanian rule.
Eitan Bronstein, a member of Zochrot, an Israeli peace group, said: "It is necessary for Israelis to understand that our independence and our Jewish state came at the expense of the Palestinians."
When asked where he comes from, he replied: "From Tel Aviv, 100m from a destroyed Palestinian village."
Three Israeli settlers proclaiming "No Palestinian state" attempted to disrupt the walk.
On Saturday, the naqba was commemorated by an ecumenical service at the Church of All Nations. Prayers were offered for peace by prelates and priests of the Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Armenian and Coptic churches.