“We have been displaced since 1948. We lost our homes, lands, farms and everything we had,” said Tawfiq Rashid, 81, who has lived with his family in the Baqaa camp since the 1967 Middle East war.

“Now, we have nothing left but to dream about returning to our land even if this dream is far from reach,” said Rashid as he carried a bag of groceries and made his way through the narrow streets of the sprawling camp outside Amman.

Around 90,000 Palestinians live in Baqaa, the largest of 10 camps in Jordan run by the UN relief agency for refugees UNRWA. Most of them settled here after the six-day war.

The UN agency cares for about 4.2 million Palestinian refugees in Syria and Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jordan, which is home to the largest refugee community with more than 1.8 million people, according to UNRWA.

Like many Palestinians, Rashid and his family were displaced more than once since the creation of Israel in 1948 and as a result of consecutive Arab-Israeli wars.

“In 1948, we fled our village of Beit Mahssir, 20 kilometres west of Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley, and in 1967, when the war broke out, I fled again with my wife and children to Amman,” he said.

“I remember the Israelis demolished and seized most of the homes in our village,” said Rashid, a former UNRWA employee.

“It was a mistake that we gave up our homes so easily, but it’s over and done with.”

Around 350,000 Palestinians fled to Jordan after the 1967 war and now live in refugee camps under UNRWA’s care.

For Othman Mahmoud, a 70-year-old surgeon, “the issue is not political.”

“It’s about people’s rights. Israel seized homes, farms and lands from Palestinians, and, today, we want to restore our rights, nothing more,” said Mahmoud.

“It was expected that the Israelis would defeat us, with their weapons and with the support of Western countries like Britain and France.

“We only had unarmed volunteers to help us. It was a real disaster but, God willing, we will recover our rights,” he said as he sipped mint tea outside his clinic.

After weeks of belligerency and brinkmanship by regional and international players, Israel launched what it called a preemptive strike in the early hours of June 5, 1967 and quickly faced off Egypt, Jordan and Syria.

The 19-year-old Jewish state conquered the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, the Golan from Syria, and the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt — an area three-and-a-half times larger than the state of Israel itself.

In 1994, Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel — the second Arab country after Egypt to make peace with the former arch-enemy.

But the effects of the war and continued violence in the region still mark the lives of Palestinians.

Little progress has been reported on a revived Arab peace plan that offers Israel normal ties in return for a withdrawal from Arab land occupied by Israel in the 1967 war, and a return of Palestinian refugees.

On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the war, Jordan urged all parties in the regional conflict to support the Arab initiative.

“Forty years on, the problem is still there and we have to work and exert every effort in a concerted way by all the parties involved and by all those who want peace and stability to reign in this region,” Government Spokesperson Nasser Judeh said on Monday.