Around eight years before the Palestinians began their current uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, a prematurely old Palestinian guerrilla - unshaven, his combat jacket frayed at the sleeves - sat in a breeze-block office in the slums of a North Lebanese refugee camp and told me why he knew he would return to the land which he still called Palestine. The rain had been guttering down into the filth and mud of the streets of Nahr el-Bared all day and I recall that as this ageing functionary of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine went on and on, a thin tide began to edge its way under the wooden door of the hut.

LRB 23 June 1988 | PDF Download