Olfat Mahmoud: Tears for Tarshiha

In 1948 the Arab-Israeli war caused the displacement of approximately 700,000 Palestinians as they fled from their homes in an area that would later become Israel. In this episode of Deep Trouble Dr Mark Halloran is in conversation with internationally recognised Palestinian activist Dr Olfat Mahmoud, founder of the Palestinian Women's Organisation (PWHO). Dr Mahmoud is a Palestinian refugee, born in a refugee camp in Lebanon 58 years ago, whose life mission is to fulfil the dream of her family to return to their hometown, Tarshiha in Palestine. Dr Mahmoud recounts the war of 1948, known to Palestinians as Al-Nakba (the catastrophe), which resulted in her grandparents fleeing from Tarshiha at gunpoint into the refugee camps of Lebanon. We talk about the psychology of exile and how her book charts the stories of three generations of women in her family; a story of great love, as well as grief and loss, for friends and family as well as for her homeland. Dr Mahmoud also discusses the history of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and its work of protecting refugees in Lebanon as well as how she feels that the international community has been complicit in its silence whilst Israel has broken various UN resolutions. We also discuss her horrifying experiences during the massacres in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon in the 1980s, where she worked as a nurse, and her claim that the Israeli army under then defence minister Ariel Sharon, were complicit in allowing the Lebanese Christian Militia to perpetrate these war crimes. Finally we talk about the hopes for Palestinian refugee's right to return, with Dr Mahmoud stating she feels hope is still there but that these hopes are 'frozen'. Tears for Tarshiha is the chronicle of Dr Mahmoud's lifelong fight to return to her homeland.