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London Review of Books

A Moment in Ramallah subscriber-only content

John Berger

Certain trees – particularly the mulberries and medlars – still tell the story of how long ago, in another life, before the nakba, Ramallah was, for the well-off, a town of leisure and ease, a place to retreat to from nearby Jerusalem during the hot summers, a resort. The nakba refers to the ‘catastrophe’ of 1948 when ten thousand Palestinians were killed and 700,000 were forced to leave their country.

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John Berger went to Ramallah in June. His most recent book, Shape of a Pocket, is published by Bloomsbury.