”Five-star refugees” also want “to return,” not just “poor people who have nowhere to go”

Israeli Arab film director Marwah Jabara Tibi: “In general the talk about refugeehood and the right of return has been limited to how the camera is placed in the refugee camps. Here we show you the Abu Ghada family, in 17 countries, what you could call ‘five-star refugees,’ and despite this they are not relinquishing the right of return. The right of return is a right of strong people who want to return to their home and are demanding this right with all [their] might. There are people who attempt to market the story of refugeehood as poor people who have nowhere to go. No! We want to return to our homeland because that is our goal. Not because our living conditions are difficult – not at all.”

[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, June 5, 2023]

Marwah Jabara Tibi is an Israeli Arab film director, who directed the 2019 film “Abbas 36” about two Arab families who lived in the same house in Haifa. One family lived there before 1948 and had to leave in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. Some of the members of thatfamily are currently living in the US. The other family bought the house after 1948 and lives in it today.