Brent Sadler: Palestinians still dream of home

CNN Beirut Bureau Chief Brent Sadler

(CNN) -- As Arab League members meet in Beirut, Lebanon, at a summit where the main subject is peace in the Middle East, many Palestinians remember the homes they left and wonder whether they will ever return.

CNN's Brent Sadler filed a story that aired on "American Morning" on Wednesday. He follows up on some Palestinian refugees interviewed by CNN two years ago to see where and what they're doing now. What follows is the transcript of that segment.

SADLER: Ahmed Elhaj, a Palestinian refugee, drove through Lebanon's Ain al-Hilweh camp two years ago. Like countless refugees, he longed to return to what they still call home in Israel. He displayed a pile of frayed documents that refer to once-owned Palestinian land in northern Israel, then to its being leveled to make way for a shopping center.

Two years ago, another refugee, Hussein Sala, brought out his family's aging land documents. He said these treasured possessions help back his claim to property the family abandoned more than 50 years ago during Israel's war of independence -- derelict after decades of Palestinian absence.

It is two years since we last saw Hussein Sala and his family. And, for the first time since leaving Ahbara -- then age 21 -- we're showing Hussein and his family our pictures of their village roots. Hussein discovers what he most wants to see. "That's our house on the rock," he says. "That rock, the house is built on it." It is the closest they've got to Ahbara in half-a-century.

"Oh my God, my God," murmurs Hussein, bitterly. "May God deprive those who deprived us." We have also brought Hussein one of Ahbara's stones, which lay some 30 miles away south of the Lebanese border. "We will return only through the intifada" he says, "God willing."

Then there was Ahmed Elhaj, another aging refugee, who showed his land claims two years ago. But much has changed since then. Israeli developers have completed their shopping center on land which Arabs call Smarya. While Israeli shoppers don't dispute Palestinian land claims, they are fearful that a refugee return would make matters even worse.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If they come to here, they're 4 million.... that's a problem. I tell you it's a problem. It will be always a problem in Israel, always.

SADLER: In Ain al-Hilweh, home of Ahmed Elhaj, there's a new custodian of his land records. Nethu Mahmud inherited the responsibility a year ago when his Uncle Ahmed died. The family takes us to the cemetery where Ahmed is buried. The graves here are filled with refugees. But hopes of a Palestinian return home somehow, sometime, are seemingly undimmed, even as time and life passes away.