Jordan: Meeting the Palestinians of Zarqa, three generations after the 'Nakba'


Mar 22 2024 16 mins  

The Jordanian city of Zarqa has a strong Palestinian identity, with good reason. In 1948, with the creation of the State of Israel – what the Palestinians call the "Nakba" ("catastrophe") – some 750,000 people, or more than 80 percent of the Palestinian population, were forced to take exile in neighbouring countries as they fled the violence. Jordan took in around 100,000 of them, with many of these refugees settling in Zarqa, a desert area on the outskirts of the capital Amman. Seventy-five years after their exile, what relationship do they have with their homeland and with their host country of Jordan?