The reasons for Palestinian pessimism are varied and vast, and the recent record speaks for itself. All that Israel under its prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has done so far is to dismantle one – yes one – outpost called Amona in February 2006.

On the other hand, Israel has this month ordered the demolition of a Palestinian village of Aqabah in the Jordan River Valley – "the mosque, medical center, the roads, all the homes and a kindergarten serving more than 130 children" – because it lacked a building permit.

"This is a mockery of law and justice," complained The Rebuilding Alliance, an American nonprofit organization that helped the village rebuild its kindergarten. It meanwhile has called on Americans to write to their congressman to help save the village. (www.RebuildingAlliance.org)

Israel has also prevented Palestinian Christian children from traveling to Israeli-occupied Jerusalem this month for this year's annual, "Children's Journey to Jerusalem," which coincided with the Greek Orthodox Easter.

The Washington-based Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (HCEF) said Israel, unexpectedly, announced for the first time that children, ages 13 and under, would require permits to enter the Holy City. Although the applications were ready three weeks before the set date, the Israeli authorities told HCEF that "there was not enough time to consider the applications."

As a matter of fact, Israel's historical record is much worse. Moshe Dayan, the late Israeli defense minister, had admitted in April 1969 that, "there is not one single place built in this country [Israel] that did not have a former Arab population."

In this respect, the case of two villages in northern Israel, mostly inhabited by Palestinian Christians, called Iqrit and Kafr Birim, but ethnically cleansed, is legendary.

In the 1948 war that created Israel, "some three-quarters of a million Palestinian refugees, over half of them villagers, took up the road for exile." While the plight of these were covered by several U.N. resolutions (calling for their "right to return"), "far less attention has been paid to the physical destruction of the world they inhabited."

(For a documentary record of those 438 Palestinian villages that were occupied by Israelis and later dispossessed see "All that Remains," edited by Dr. Walid Khalidi.)

This is one reason Palestinians refer to Israel's founding as the Catastrophe (al-Nakba), recalling Israel's expulsion of Palestinians and confiscation of Arab land, including "80 percent of the lands" of Palestinian/Israeli citizens who never left their homes.

The total number of refugees who went into exile "constituted 54 percent of the total Palestinian population in Mandatory Palestine," but many who remained behind, in Iqrit and Kafr Birim, were displaced internally.

The less than 500 inhabitants of Iqrit, which is very close to the Lebanese border, thought they could stay in their village after the occupation of their village in November 1948.

But a week after their surrender they were summarily evacuated by force reportedly to allow the Israeli troops to continue their mopping up operations in the region. They were assured that they would return after a fortnight but these promises were never honored and they and their descendants continue to live to this day in nearby villages.

Kafr Birim, which had some 500 residents experienced the same treatment as many others in that region, falling prey to the Israeli "principle of an Arab-less border strip." (http://www.iqrit.org)

Three years later and on Christmas Eve, some of Iqrit's elders were taken by the Israeli army to a nearby hill to watch the demolition of the stone houses in their village – a cruel step that was repeated elsewhere, presumably because of alleged security concerns.

The only buildings that were not demolished were the village's Greek Catholic Church, the graveyard and a few Roman ruins. Kafr Birim's church and its bell tower were also spared.

The Palestinians resorted to the Israeli courts and have also won several favorable opinions from the Israeli Supreme Court that sanctioned their return to Iqrit, but these rulings were never implemented.

Nevertheless, the villagers and their descendants managed to continue to use the church in Iqrit for their weddings and the cemetery for the burial of their deceased. On the first Saturday of every month a priest comes to Iqrit and holds mass there at St. Mary's Church.

When Israelis celebrate their anniversary this week, they may remember that their fellow citizens from Iqrit and Kafr Birim are denied re-establishing their communities. But if nothing else, the people of Iqrit and Kafr Birim are a testament to "enduring Palestinian desire to remain in touch with life pre-1948, whatever the obstacles," as a BBC reporter noted recently.

No wonder why Palestinians are about to finally lose total faith in U.N. resolutions calling for their repatriation and in the repeated promises of some world leaders to find a fair and honorable settlement.

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George S. Hishmeh is a syndicated columnist.