The following story, which occurred last week, will testify to what is going on among the Palestinian refugees from 1948. Karine Abu Zeid, the Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said in a newspaper interview that in her opinion most of the refugees realize that they will not return to their lost homes and property in Israeli territory and they do not think of the right of return as a practical possibility.

Her remarks were based on well-known UNRWA data, according to which the vast majority of the members of refugee families are the second-, third- and fourth-generation descendants of people who experienced first-hand the Nakba (Palestinian catastrophe of 1948) of the Israeli War of Independence and were uprooted. "There are only a few old people who are still dreaming of going back," said Abu-Zeid.

What is interesting is the stormy reaction to her statement. Spokesman on behalf of the refugees' committee of Fatah and various other Palestinian organizations that deal with the issue strongly condemned her remarks. "We reject her remarks, and it is not her job to deal with this," they said.

This is a typical reaction. According to the UNRWA figures, there are more than 4 million descendants of refugees registered at its institutions. The Palestinians say that another 1.5 million refugees are not registered with UNRWA, so that their total number comes to 5.5 million. As is known, the largest concentration of refugees is in the Gaza Strip, about 950,000 (out of about 1.3 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip). About half a million of the Gaza refugees live in UNRWA camps, from Jabalya in the north (105,000 people) to Rafah in the south (91,000).

It is important to note these figures because the experience of loss is still burning in these refugees' bones. And not just theirs. The Palestinian people as a whole is living the uprooting suffered by about half of its members. In every corner of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, paintings and sculptures in the shape of keys can be found. A statue of a woman carrying a large key in her hand stands, for example, in the center of the plaza near the entrance to the home of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) in Ramallah.

In this context it was possible to see the outburst of anger among Palestinians who were asked whether they didn't have even a little bit of sympathy for the Jewish settlers in Gush Katif and northern Samaria (West Bank) who are losing their homes. No. They don't have any sympathy or any understanding. All of the requests for forgiveness from the settlers, like that of President Moshe Katsav, and all the sympathy with their terrible pain and their distress from Israeli politicians look to Palestinians like egotism and hypocrisy.

In the context of what has been happening in Gaza recently, an Israeli observer can also see it this way. During the course of the bloody conflicts of recent years, approximately 30,000 inhabitants of the Gaza Strip have been uprooted from their homes. Entire Palestinian neighborhoods along the Philadelphi route in Rafah, at the edges of the Khan Yunis refugee camp, along the route to Netzarim and in the north on the edges of Beit Hanun have been turned into heaps of ruins by the Israel Defense Forces. The reason was an Israeli security need.

Thousands of Palestinian refugees, with only a few days' warning, and in some cases only a few hours, have had to evacuate their homes, which were demolished, and their fields and orchards, which have been razed. In at least two cases that were publicized, an Israeli bulldozer demolished a house with its tenants inside, two old people to whom no one had paid any attention, and they were buried under the ruins.

On a number of occasions, UNRWA workers have taken Israeli and foreign journalists to see the piles of ruins and the temporary accommodations (tents) they prepared for these families. On this day when the families of the Israeli settlers in Gaza are receiving the notifications about losing their homes, it is permissible to remember their neighbors' loss as well.