In the Shadow of the Six-Day War

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As if on cue, a young mother enters the shop cradling a baby in a lace bonnet. Omar cuts her a hunk of meat from a carcass hanging in the window, then writes down her name in a ledger. "These are the people who can't pay me. See? Many pages. Thousands of shekels. But how can I refuse them?" he asks. The woman leaves, and the shop is empty save for a few flies stirred in the air by a ceiling fan.

"We want peace with the Jews," says Omar, "but we want to go back to our land." It's the same thought his uncle had in 1967, listening to Egyptian radio, and it has as much chance of happening now as it did then. Forty years after their great disappointment, those who live in the Jalazon refugee camp know that it may be the only home that they, their children and their grandchildren ever know. [This article contains a complex diagram. Please see hardcopy of magazine.]