The Memory of Place among Displaced Palestinians and Its Impact on the Right of Return Culture

Abstract

This research talks about the subject of chronicling part of the Palestinian

people suffering, which resulted from the 1948 disaster. This occurred

by reliance on place memory. The scholar adopted related narration given

by the witnesses who resorted to the memory of place to retrieve situations,

events and to recall photos and scenes. After scrutinizing and examining

the details of these narrations, it was clear that place was an important

factor in the formation of these narrations as well as their literature. The

parts and connotation of place revealed for the narrators whatever hidden

by time and kept away by age. Place, by its spirit and sense, was able to dust

off events and situations that were of the past. It was also able to remove

the sand of the past to reveal scenes and pictures which faded and revived

them. Afterwards these pictures are to be introduced to humans with known

place features easy to read and interpret after along alienation. The success

of the researcher in meeting the narrator in his place is considered success

in recalling events and ruminating pictures, which is difficult in normal

circumstances. Therefore, meeting the narrators, integrated places, has its

importance in the field of research and verbal history. This is because place

is considered an important factor in stimulating the narrators memory and

to push to link the events with places. To sum up, the researchers interest

in the place memory of the narrators is considered one of the important

methods and techniques of research in the field of verbal history. In the

same context, the memory of place plays an important role in restructuring

the feature of lost land and its reproduction in the reflection of catastrophe

(Nakba) people who held the picture of land between their hearts in order to

transfer it to their children and grand children so that they may struggle to

return the land and its deserted image to the mind and charge it with right

of return.