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Naksa

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Not to be confused with the Nakba.
This article is about the displacement of Palestinians following the 1967 Six-Day War. For other meanings, see Naksa (disambiguation).
A Palestinian refugee in the Jaramana refugee camp in Syria, 1974

The Naksa (Arabic: النكسة, "the setback")[1] was the displacement of around 280,000 to 325,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, when the territories were captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.[2] A number of Palestinian villages were destroyed by the Israeli military, such as Imwas, Yalo, Bayt Nuba, Beit Awwa, and Al-Jiftlik, among others.[3]

Background

Further information: Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Nakba, and 1949–1956 Palestinian expulsions

Historian Tom Segev writes that "the hope of moving the Arabs of Palestine to other states had been a constant factor in the Zionist movement", and that "during British rule, Zionist leaders looked into various ways of paying Arabs to move to distant provinces."[4] During the 1948 Palestine war, there were major expulsions of Palestinians, which resulted in ~750,000 Palestinian refugees. Approximately 145,000 of those expelled in 1967 were already refugees from the 1948 displacement.[5] After the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the West Bank was annexed to Jordan and the Gaza Strip became an unrecognized client state of Egypt known as the All-Palestine Protectorate until its dissolution in 1959.

Six-Day War

Main article: Six-Day War

In April 1967, Israel and Syria engaged in a border skirmish that culminated in the downing of six Syrian MiG fighters near the Golan Heights.[6] Shortly thereafter, after receiving misleading reports about IDF activity on the Israeli-Syrian border from the Soviet Union, Egypt expelled UNEF peacekeepers from the Sinai Peninsula[7] and later blockaded the Straits of Tiran.[8] Roughly two weeks later, Israel responded with a surprise attack against the air forces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, beginning the Six-Day War.[9] Following Israel's victory in the war, it occupied several territories that had previously belonged to its neighbors under the newly-established Israeli Military Governorate.[10]

Naksa

Palestinian refugees flee to Jordan, crossing the destroyed Allenby Bridge, 1967

By December 1967, 245,000 had fled from the West Bank and Gaza Strip into Jordan, 11,000 had fled from the Gaza Strip to Egypt and 116,000 Palestinians and Syrians had fled from the Golan Heights further into Syria.[11] Until 1967, roughly half of all Palestinians still lived within the boundaries of former Mandatory Palestine, but after 1967 the majority lived as refugees in other countries.[5]

The refugee camps of Aqabat Jaber, ʿEin as-Sultan, and Nu‘aymah, whose residents were refugees from the 1948 Palestinian expulsions, were almost entirely emptied, with approximately 50,000 people having fled or been expelled to Jordan.[a]

A United Nations Special Committee heard allegations of the destruction of over 400 Arab villages, but no evidence in corroboration was furnished to the Special Committee to investigate Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the population of the occupied territories.[b] In 1971, this UN committee published a report in which it stated that:

On the basis of the testimony placed before it or obtained by it in the course of its investigations, the Special Committee had been led to conclude that the Government of Israel is deliberately carrying out policies aimed at preventing the population of the occupied territories from returning to their homes and forcing those who are in their homes in the occupied territories to leave, either by direct means such as deportation or indirectly by attempts at undermining their morale or through the offer of special inducements, all with the ultimate object of annexing and settling the occupied territories. The Special Committee considers the acts of the Government of Israel in furtherance of these policies to be the most serious violation of human rights that has come to its attention. The evidence shows that this situation has deteriorated since the last mission of the Special Committee in 1970.[12]

After the psychological warfare unit made a visit to Qalqilya and many of the residents had fled, the UN representative Nils-Göran Gussing noted that 850 of the town's 2,000 houses were demolished.[13]

Commemmoration

Main article: Naksa Day

The Naksa is commemorated annually on Naksa Day, a day of remembrance for the events of the 1967 displacement.[14]

Historiography

Historian Nur Masalha wrote in 2003 that: "In contrast to the large number of books written on the Palestinian refugee exodus of 1948, only meagre historical research has been carried out on the 1967 exodus."[15]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ Masalha 2003, "Between 1949 and 1967 the Palestinian population in the West Jordan Valley was dominated by three huge refugee camps surrounding the town of Jericho: ‘Ayn Sultan, Nu‘aymah and ‘Aqbat Jabir. The residents of these camps had been driven out from present-day Israel in 1948-9. During the 1967 hostilities or shortly after virtually all residents of these camps, approximately 50,000 people, fled or were expelled to the East Bank"
  2. ^ Para 57: "appearing in the Sunday Times (London) on 11 October 1970, where reference is made not only to the villages of Jalou, Beit Nuba, and Imwas, also referred to by the Special Committee in its first report, but in addition to villages like Surit, Beit Awwa, Beit Mirsem and El-Shuyoukh in the Hebron area and Jiflik, Agarith and Huseirat, in the Jordan Valley. The Special Committee has ascertained that all these villages have been completely destroyed". Para 58: "the village of Nebi Samwil was in fact destroyed by Israeli armed forces on March 22, 1971."[12]

Citations

  1. ^ Shaked 2022, p. 7.
  2. ^ Bowker 2003, p. 81.
  3. ^ Masalha 2003
  4. ^ Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East (2007)
  5. ^ a b McDowall 1989, p. 84
  6. ^ Department Of State. The Office of Electronic Information, Bureau of Public Affairs (2007-12-13). "Arab-Israeli War of 1967". 2001-2009.state.gov. Retrieved 2024-10-23.
  7. ^ Bligh, Alexander (2014). "The United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), 1956–67: Past Experience, Current Lessons". Middle Eastern Studies. 50 (5): 796–809. ISSN 0026-3206. JSTOR 24585888.
  8. ^ Barak, Eitan (2007). "Between Reality and Secrecy: Israel's Freedom of Navigation through the Straits of Tiran, 1956-1967". Middle East Journal. 61 (4): 657–679. ISSN 0026-3141. JSTOR 4330453.
  9. ^ Gat, Moshe (2004). "On the Use of Air Power and Its Effect on the Outbreak of the Six Day War". The Journal of Military History. 68 (4): 1187–1215. ISSN 1543-7795.
  10. ^ Raphaeli, Nimrod (1969). "Military Government in the Occupied Territories: An Israeli View". Middle East Journal. 23 (2): 177–190. ISSN 0026-3141. JSTOR 4324434.
  11. ^ McDowall, "By December, 245,000 had fled from the West Bank and Gaza Strip across the Jordan, 116,000 had fled from the Golan further into Syria, and 11,000 had left Gaza for Egypt. Of these 145,000 were UNRWA refugees uprooted for the second time. Many more left in the following months, either forcibly expelled by the occupying authorities or choosing not to live under Israeli military government. Over 300,000 probably left Palestine as a result of the 1967 war."
  12. ^ a b Thant 1971.
  13. ^ Segev 2007, p. 405.
  14. ^ Mohammed Zaatari (31 May 2011). "Army may prevent June 5 protesters reaching border fence". The Daily Star. Archived from the original on 7 October 2012. Retrieved 1 June 2011.
  15. ^ Masalha, N. (2003). The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Pluto Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt18dztmq

Sources

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