1967 & the Naksa

UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories — Human Rights Council mandate

Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

An independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, the Special Rapporteur investigates and reports publicly on Israel's violations of international law in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, reporting annually to the Human Rights Council.

Kamal Boullata

1942–2019

A Jerusalem painter locked out of his city by the 1967 war, who built an abstraction out of Kufic script and the eight-pointed star, and wrote the first full history of Palestinian art.

Returning to Haifa

Ghassan Kanafani

A Palestinian couple return to their Haifa home after 1967 and find their son — raised as an Israeli soldier — behind its door.

The Six-Day War

1967

Israel captures the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights in six days, beginning a military occupation that continues to this day.

UN Security Council Resolution 242

1967

Adopted unanimously on 22 November 1967, resolution 242 emphasised the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and called for withdrawal from territories occupied in the recent conflict. It mentioned Palestinians only once, as a refugee problem.

Hamza

Fadwa Touqan

A man from Touqan's own town, ordinary as bread, tells her in the years after 1967 to be patient and not to weaken — the land, he says, will remain alive and will not die.

East Jerusalem

geography

The eastern part of Jerusalem, including the Old City and its holy sites, occupied by Israel in 1967 and unilaterally annexed in 1980 — an annexation not recognized internationally, with the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice treating it as occupied Palestinian territory.

Green Line

geography

The Green Line is the armistice demarcation line fixed by the 1949 agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors, named for the green ink used to draw it on the map; it served as Israel's de facto boundary until June 1967 and remains the internationally recognized reference for the occupied Palestinian territory.

Military Order 101

legal

An August 1967 Israeli military order that bans political gatherings, processions, and publications — including the display of flags and political symbols — in the occupied West Bank without prior permission from the military commander.

Naksa

history

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.

Settlement

legal

Settlements are the residential communities Israel has built for its citizens in the territories occupied in 1967. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its own civilian population into occupied territory, and the UN Security Council has affirmed that the settlements have 'no legal validity.'

Bayt Nuba

Ramla

Bayt Nuba was the third of the Latrun villages, with Imwas and Yalu. Israeli forces took the salient in the first hours of the June 1967 war; that night the inhabitants of all three villages — some 12,000 people — were ordered out, and the built-up area of Bayt Nuba was afterwards destroyed by military demolition. Mevo Horon was established on its lands in 1970, and the site lies within Canada Park.

Imwas

Ramla

Imwas, widely identified with the biblical Emmaus, survived two thousand years of empires before Israeli forces expelled its residents and bulldozed the village in June 1967. Its site lies inside Canada Park, beside the ruins of Emmaus Nicopolis.

Yalo

Ramla

Yalo stood in the Latrun salient on the road from Ramla to Jerusalem until June 1967, when its people were expelled and the village bulldozed together with Imwas and Bayt Nuba. Its lands now lie inside Canada Park, planted over the ruins.

Jerash Camp (Gaza Camp)

Jerash, Jordan

Built in March 1968 for 11,500 Palestinians driven out of Gaza in the June war, Jerash camp is known in Jordan simply as the Gaza Camp. Nearly nine in ten of its residents come from the Gaza Strip — and unlike other Palestinians in Jordan, they hold no citizenship, which has made it the poorest camp in the kingdom.

Jerusalem

Jerusalem Governorate

Jerusalem — al-Quds — is the city Palestinians measure all distance from: holy to three faiths, capital in memory and aspiration, and since 1967 the hardest fault line of the conflict, from the walls of the Old City to the threatened homes of Sheikh Jarrah.

Qalqilya

West Bank

Qalqilya, the orange-growing market town at the western edge of the West Bank, was gutted in 1967 and rebuilt by its returning people; since 2003 the separation wall has closed around it on three sides, leaving a whole city a single gate.

The 1967 war was purely defensive — Israel had no choice

security

Israel's own senior leaders later said otherwise on the record: Prime Minister Begin listed 1967 among Israel's wars of choice and admitted 'we decided to attack him,' and Chief of Staff Rabin said of Nasser, 'I do not think Nasser wanted war... He knew it and we knew it.'

Abdullah Nashwan

Eleven years old when his family fled the massacre at al-Dawayima in October 1948; displaced again in 1967, he has lived in Jordan's Baqa'a camp since.

Ahmad Abughoush

Expelled from Imwas at fourteen during the 1967 war, he describes his family's flight on foot to Ramallah before Israeli bulldozers razed the village and Canada Park was planted over its ruins.