Advocacy program

Starting of her own conviction and commitment to our citizen's decisive cases, and undertaking a pioneer role toward dealing with it, the Najdeh association took a decision to launch the right to return special campaign, and this while we are getting near to the 60 anniversary to 1948 disaster that caused the dislodgement of our people into different countries, and nowadays, and after 59 years of seeking shelter, our Palestinian people is still holding to his right of coming back refusing all kind of solutions that may deprive him this right.

The association started preparing to launch this campaign in collaboration with its partners in Europe in order to vitalize the disaster 60th memory. And indeed the association put a working plan that starts with choosing a Palestinian village which most of its citizens referred shelter abroad. The first step of the plan is making interviews and registering their memories, and meanwhile, another intern association register interviews in order to make it the memory bridge between the inside and the outside, through combined memories which will be translated into groups of activity that will be crowned with a European campaign about the right of coming back that includes many activities in the 60th memory.

They chose a Palestinian village called Ras El Ahmar, stands 8, 5 km away from the North of Safad, the number of its population in 1945 was around 620 person owners of most of the village lands (7,931 - 7,934 sq. m.). The village was occupied in 30 October 1948, and was destroyed by the Israeli army at the end of 1948.

The village citizens were forced to leave it and most of them immigrated to Lebanon, and are still living in refugee camps, especially in Ein El Helwe. Few of the village citizens stayed in near areas that became a part of Israel.

This Palestinian village was completely destroyed, there's nothing you can find except of one school and one house. A knew Jewish village (Nochav) was built instead.

The Najdeh association formed a team work group in order to make interviews with 22 families from Ras El Ahmar residing in Ain El Helwe, especially eldest people that experienced the stage before and afterward the disaster in order to have more details about the village, its history, and the nature of its population and life. That's how interviews became a trusted clause through movies and booklets translated into different languages (Arabic - English - French) and the use of materials and old things belonging to the period before the disaster that will be collected from families and exposed in a special exhibition in addition to a group of photographs belonging to different villages (1948) including the village of Ras El Ahmar.