From A Year of Discovery by Fouad Moughrabi

One of the hazards of exile is that, over the years, the physical reality of a place begins to recede and gradually enters the realm of the imagination. In the imagination of Palestinian exiles, Palestine was an idyllic place of orange, olive, and fig groves and hillsides covered with varieties of grape vines. The fruits and the vegetables were, of course, the biggest and the most delicious in the entire world. We remember the taste of pure olive oil, za'atar, and tabun bread. Some of the sounds and smells of the land have been carved so indelibly in our souls that a few steps in Jerusalem's Old City are sufficient to trigger a rush of memories. We recall Palestinians as a wonderful and caring people who have suffered great injustice at the hands of foreign invaders and occupiers. We recall evenings spent with family and friends, visits to grandmothers and other relatives. We remember long hours spent studying in the fields, driven by a tremendous zeal to achieve, to go on to some great university, and eventually to return to do something worthwhile.

Early dreams remain vivid in the imagination. We dreamed, for example, of building a big house where all the brothers would live and where the family would be together, where father and mother finally would be able to enjoy their lives, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. We dreamed of building a truly free and democratic society in a liberated Palestine, not one like the other Arab countries whose leaders we despised. Many of us never had lived under Israeli occupation and knew almost nothing about Israeli society. In the early 1950s, under the Jordanian administration, we had been careful not to listen to Israeli radio. We even had been careful not to read the literature of the Palestinians who had remained in Palestine under Israeli control. In secret, we read smuggled poems by Mahmoud Darwish and Samih al-Qassem.

Growing up, we had been confident that Israel, the foreign body that had displaced us, would be around only for a short period of time. We had thought that, in the end, we could erase it from our existence and our memories. Later, the entity began to invade our imagination as a threatening and dangerous thing. Acts of resistance against it were glorified. A sense of false optimism led many to believe that the day of liberation was at hand. Every time a major disappointment occurred, the dream was pushed back, but it never was pushed out of our imagination.
[...]
Palestinians live under intense pressure. Daily life is extremely difficult. It is more complicated now during the so-called era of peace. Closures mean that people cannot go from one town to the next or sometimes from one village to the next. Visiting Jerusalem, which is the intellectual, social, economic, and spiritual center of Palestinian life, is next to impossible. Trying to get a permit to travel to Jerusalem or to go to Tel Aviv Airport to fly overseas becomes a major hurdle. Palestine has turned into the land of permits, of barbed wire fences, of checkpoints, and of strict bounderies that keep shifting at the expense of the Palestinians.
[...]
Before I returned to Palestine, I thought that perhaps the people who carried out the Intifada, once they had the opportunity, would affirm their desire to live democratically. I remain firmly convinced that a truly democratic system is the best and the most beneficial system of governance for the Palestinians. Palestinian society is pluralistic, mostly secular, highly politicized, and quite sophisticated. Yet, the institutions now being put in place, and the practices being used, are far from democratic.
[...]
One very important question on peoples' mind is the following: How is it that the people who carried out the Intifada are willing to tolerate a shabby system such as the one now being put in place in the new Palestine? Few people realize the extent of disorientation that resulted from the quick events that led to the first Oslo agreement. A new reality was established, based on an international consensus that the Palestine problem must be settled.
[...]
Criticism of Oslo was marginalized and quickly superseded by events. For a while, people were led to believe that the opposition comprised only extremist and fundamentalist religious groups. Those who had serious misgivings were not sure how to criticize and on that basis and what alternative to present.
[...]
I do not wish to seem unduly critical of my people and how they live. For many years, I have lived in the comfort of exile and have not shared with them the abuse and suffering they endured. I criticize lovingly because I wish to see a better future for my people, and because I am emotionally committed to them. I have no personal or political agenda except the general one of wanting to see a prosperous and democratic Palestine finally come into being.

Courtesy Dr. Fouad Moughrabi and Journal of Palestine Studies XXVI, no. 2 (Winter 1997), pp. 5-15, from the Institute for Palestine Studies