SHARE It is just 233 kilometres from Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem to the Shatila refugee camp on the edge of Beirut, and for the past week the escalating violence in the holy city has been the only thing on people’s minds. In the Palestinian refugee camp, there are few signs of the covid-19 pandemic – no masks or social distancing. Instead, its residents are preoccupied with Jerusalem. “I cannot describe the feeling, but I wish I was with them on the ground,” says Wassim Abu Hazina, 30, who works as a media official for the camp in southern Beirut. These Palestinians, the families and descendants who were forced from their homes in the 1948 formation of the Israeli state in an event known as the Nakba – catastrophe – are denied the right of return and must watch from afar, like thousands of other Palestinians around the region.