Mohammad Biqai was 9 years old when he joined the Ashbal youth program of the Fatah movement in Lebanon in 1979. Born in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in southern Lebanon to a Palestinian family from the village of Damoun near Acre — one of the 418 villages destroyed during the founding of Israel around 1948 — Biqai grew up dreaming of the day he and others would return to a liberated Palestine.
His temporary return to Palestine in November, however, did not occur the way he had dreamed it might. Biqai, also known as Abu Adel, was part of a 50-member Lebanese delegation that attended Fatah’s seventh congress Nov. 29. Biqai, who runs the Fatah media program in south Lebanon, had to enter the West Bank on a special permit issued by the Palestinian government in coordination with the Israelis. Some of the Lebanese delegates were invited at the last minute, after the Jordanian Fatah delegates decided not to come for fear of losing their Jordanian citizenship, as Jordan made it clear that Palestinian Jordanians can’t have dual citizenship.
