Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
My home is Beit Daras: our lingering Nakba
An Israeli army camp at Bayt Daras, 1948

WHEN Google Earth was initially released in 2001, I immediately rushed to locate a village that no longer exists on a map, which now delineates a whole different reality.

Although I was born and raised in a Gaza refugee camp and then moved to and lived in the United States, finding a village that was erased from the map decades earlier was not, at least for me, an irrational act. 

The village of Beit Daras was the single most important piece of Earth that truly mattered to me.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
Palestinian students walk to school along a fence separating their village from a nearby illegal Israeli settlement of Carmel, which forces them to take an alternative route nearly twice as long, near the West Bank village of Umm al-Khair, April 14, 2026
Middle East / 17 April 2026
17 April 2026

Bezalel Smotrich’s measures to extend Israeli property law into the West Bank are a continuation of a decades-long project to dispossess Palestinians and preclude statehood, argues HUGH LANNING 

Swee Ang (first on right) during her annual visit to the Sabra Shatila commemoration in Beirut with children born after the massacre Pic: courtesy of Swee Ang
Features / 9 November 2025
9 November 2025

SWEE ANG, the founder of Medical Aid for Palestinians, is a big believer in the power of small actions, and she is the living proof it works, writes Linda Pentz Gunter

HEROIC CONCLUSION: The riders by the sculpture of Mary Barbour - sculpted by Andrew Brown - commemorating the 1915 Glasgow Rent Strike
Aw That / 2 August 2025
2 August 2025

MATT KERR charts his bike-riding odyssey in aid of the Royal Marsden charity and CWU Humanitarian Aid

DISTINGUISHED: Portrait of Hans Hess c1962 (photographer unk
Features / 20 June 2025
20 June 2025

NICK MATTHEWS previews a landmark book launch taking place in Leicester next weekend