Haifa: On the morning of April 8, 1948, a seven-year-old Antoine Raffoul climbed onto the back of an open truck with nine members of his family and left behind the Palestinian port city of Haifa. The family packed light, thinking it would just be a temporary escape from the violence spreading across Palestine in the final months before the establishment of Israel.

According to Anadolu Agency, Raffoul recounted the events of that day in a video interview, remembering how he sat under a table that his grandfather had placed on the truck to shield the children from the sun. As the vehicle moved north toward Lebanon, he worried about the bicycle he left behind but desperately wanted to take with him. His father reassured him, saying, "We will come back. Don't worry, we will come back and collect it." The family locked their home, handed the key to neighbors, and fled north toward Lebanon. However, they were never able to return. Seventy-eight years later, Raffoul and hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians expelled from their homes in 1948 have still not been able to return.

More than 800,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced during the events surrounding the establishment of Israel in 1948, a catastrophe Palestinians commemorate annually on May 15 as the Nakba. During that time, Israel closed borders and barred most refugees from re-entering and passed laws such as the Absentees' Property Law in 1950, allowing the state to take control of land and homes belonging to Palestinians who had fled or were displaced during the war. Many refugees lost ownership of their homes, or their entire villages disappeared.

Raffoul, an 84-year-old architect and activist now living in the UK, was born in Nazareth in 1941. He belonged to a middle-class family, living with his parents, grandparents, and six siblings in a house built by his grandfather in Haifa. "Life was very peaceful at that time in the early forties," he recalled. As violence escalated in Palestine later in the 1940s, he overheard conversations among adults about Zionist militias, massacres in Palestinian towns, and the bombardment of transport facilities in Haifa. His family made a plan to temporarily leave for the safe zone of Lebanon in the north.

Once settled in Lebanon, Raffoul's father managed to return to Haifa by sea to retrieve family archives and belongings before access became impossible. Among the possessions preserved were photographs, official papers, and the key to their home. After his father passed away, Raffoul inherited these memories of his family's life in Palestine. As an adult, his political activism became closely tied to his work as an architect. Following the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank after the Second Intifada, he began campaigning against architects and firms involved in settlement construction.

One of his significant campaigns focused on Lifta, a depopulated Palestinian village on the outskirts of Jerusalem that remained largely abandoned since 1948. Raffoul worked to preserve its history, successfully advocating for its recognition as a UNESCO tentative World Heritage Site and gaining attention from the World Monument Fund.

Now in his eighties, Raffoul focuses on Gaza and the future of Palestinians displaced across generations. He has developed architectural plans to help rebuild Gaza following Israel's war on the enclave. Raffoul expressed his hope for the return of all Palestinian refugees to their homes and his desire to see a free Palestine where he can return without being questioned at the border.