Palestinian in exile paints reminder of "Nakba"

By Ola Galal

DUBAI (Reuters) - Tents, flags and boats are images all too familiar to Palestinian refugees.

As Israel celebrates the 60th anniversary of its birth, Palestinian artist Jeffar Khaldi emphasises those emblems in his "Wish You Were Here" exhibition as a reminder of his people's "Nakba" or "catastrophe" of displacement.

"I am not a political artist, but I feel very strongly about my cause and, as a painter, I feel responsible to do some powerful work to reflect our strong cause," Khaldi told Reuters at the opening of his show in Dubai, where he lives and works.

"Some of my work is about exodus, loss, refugee camps, tents... and to remind people of our story that has been going on for 60 years, I included these works in that exhibition."

Some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in the war that led to the founding of Israel in 1948. About 4.5 million refugees and their descendents now live in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The history of Khaldi's family, like that of many other Palestinian refugees, spans three generations of diaspora that began with the flight of his grandparents to a camp in Lebanon.

"My grandmother always told me about the house they had in Palestine, the land, the people and the kind of life they had until in a split second they were running for their life on the back of donkeys," Khaldi said.

In an oil-on-canvas titled "Phase Two", Khaldi depicts dozens of tents piled atop each other in a wooden boat on a lake, as a man holding what appears to be a baby looks on.