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History1 min read

Naksa

النكسة

The Naksa — Arabic for 'setback' — is the term used across the Arab world for the defeat of June 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, and Syria's Golan Heights, and several hundred thousand Palestinians were newly displaced.

In the war of 5–10 June 1967 — known in Israel and the West as the Six-Day War — Israel defeated the armies of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria and took control of the remaining parts of Mandate Palestine it had not captured in 1948, along with Egyptian and Syrian territory. In November 1967 the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242, calling for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in the conflict in exchange for peace; its implementation has remained contested ever since.

For Palestinians, the Naksa brought a second wave of displacement: estimates range from roughly 250,000 to 400,000 people who fled or were driven out, many of them refugees of 1948 displaced for a second time. It also placed more than a million Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza under Israeli military occupation — an occupation that has now lasted well over half a century — and opened the way for the settlement enterprise that followed.

The word itself carries a deliberate understatement: where nakba names a catastrophe, naksa — reportedly favored by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser in announcing the defeat — names a setback, implying something from which one might recover. Palestinians commemorate it each year on 5 June as the beginning of the occupation.

Sources

Cited works

2
  1. palquest.org — june 1967 war(opens in a new tab)https://www.palquest.org/en/highlight/163/june-1967-war
  2. britannica.com — Six Day War(opens in a new tab)https://www.britannica.com/event/Six-Day-War

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  • UN Security Council Resolution 242Timeline

    Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: In November 1967 the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242, calling for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in the conflict in exchange for peace; its implementation has remained contested ever since.

names this record — 1 record

One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.

  • The Six-Day WarTimeline

    Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: For Palestinians, 1967 was a second catastrophe — the Naksa, or "setback." Roughly 300,000 more Palestinians were displaced, many of them refugees for a second time.

Cite this page

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Chicago
“Naksa.” Glossary, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/glossary/naksa.
MLA
“Naksa.” Glossary, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/glossary/naksa. Accessed 22 August 2026.
BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-naksa, title = {Naksa}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/glossary/naksa}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }