Today, June 5, marks the 40th anniversary of the 1967 War and the inception of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Although the war lasted only six days, its ramifications were long-lasting and devastating on the entire Palestinian population and to the Arab region in general.
At the time Israel launched its second major war on the Palestinians – the first being the 1948 War in which the state of Israel was created and over 800,000 Palestinians were displaced or expelled from their homes – the West Bank and East Jerusalem had been annexed to Jordan and the Gaza Strip was under the administrative control of Egypt. Several thousand Palestinians had already been made refugees from the 1948 War, and the Palestine question had been on the table in the international arena, namely the United Nations since then.
Hence, tensions were running high between the fledgling Jewish state and neighboring Arab countries. In the early sixties, Israel was threatening to strike Syria if it did not stop Palestinian guerrilla attacks on Israel from its territories even though these attacks, carried out by the newly found Fateh organization, could hardly be considered as major threats to Israel’s security.
Still, with the looming threat of another Israeli offensive (Israel had previously participated in the tripartite invasion on Egypt’s Suez Canal in 1956), then-Egyptian President Jamal Abdul Nasser amassed Egyptian troops in the Sinai Peninsula and ordered the UN troops out, present there to ensure the demilitarization of the area. Israel exploited this maneuver to launch what it called a “preemptive” assault on Egypt, ostensibly in self-defense. However, Israel had long set its eyes on what is now the occupied territories and used this opportunity to grab more Arab land, namely Jerusalem.
Hence, on the morning of June 5, 1967, Israel launched its attack on Egypt, destroying its grounded air force in a matter of a few hours. Even though at the time, Egypt had the most advanced military force in the Arab world, it was hardly comparable to Israel’s army, which soon entered the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights in what was dubbed “Operation Focus.” It first took the Sinai Peninsula in the south, then the Golan Heights in the north before pushing Jordanian forces out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, boasting that Jerusalem was “finally unified.”
While Israel took a mere six days to defeat Arab troops and occupy the remainder of historical Palestine along with parts of other neighboring Arab countries, the aggression was catastrophic for the Palestinians, who would later refer to the war as “Al Naksa” or “The Setback”, in reference to their first catastrophe “Al Nakba” in 1948.
In the course of these six days of hostilities, an additional 60,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes, nearly half of them for the second time around. Seven villages in the West Bank including refugee camps in Jericho and half of the city of Qalqilya in addition to the Morrocan Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, were completely destroyed.
An estimated 95 percent of the 1967 refugees fled to the East Bank of Jordan where they settled in the country’s already expanding Palestinian refugee camps. While an estimated one million Palestinians remained in the occupied areas of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, an approximate 60,000 Palestinians were abroad during the war and were not included in Israel’s September 1967 consensus. These Palestinians were thus not considered legal inhabitants of the territories and were not granted any legal residency rights there.
Later in June of that year, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 237, which called on Israel to ensure the safety, welfare and security of those inhabitants in areas were military operations took place while facilitating the return of those who fled the hostilities. However, similar to the situation following 1948, Israel openly disregarded UN resolutions and international law, not allowing refugees to return to their homes.
A few months later, UN Resolution 242 was passed, which called for a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. It also called on Israel to withdraw from territories occupied in the war in exchange for peace with its neighbors. This resolution as well, was completely shunned by the Jewish state.
Today, 40 years later and after numerous peace agreements and endless negotiations, the Palestinian people in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem are still forced to live under the suffocating conditions of Israel’s military occupation of their land in addition to the Syrian Golan Heights. In spite of a number of calls for Israel to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian land [the longest in modern history], Israel has continuously shown disregard for international humanitarian law and charters and insists on subjecting the Palestinian population to degrading everyday measures while denying them their national right of an independent Palestinian state. This is in spite of the fact that in 1988, the PLO officially recognized Israel’s right to exist and accepted the establishment of a Palestinian state on 22 percent of historical Palestine.
Nevertheless, issues such as Jerusalem, the right of return for Palestinian refugees and illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank have all remained unresolved and major points of contention between the two sides. Additionally, the international community with the United States at the helm, has been largely indifferent to the plight of the Palestinians, showing its undeniable bias towards Israel and supporting the right of this state, established and sustained at the expense of an entire nation, to occupy and oppress another people with impunity.
UN Resolution 1325
Date posted: February 03, 2021
By MIFTAH
Kerry talks peace while Israel bars UNESCO mission [May 19 - May 25]
Date posted: May 25, 2013
By MIFTAH
President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both met with US Secretary of State John Kerry this week in the latter’s fourth visit to the region since he assumed office.
After meeting with the two to ostensibly find ways to restart stalled negotiations between the two sides, Kerry urged on May 24 both Israeli and Palestinian leaders to take "hard decisions" to revive the peace process.
"We're getting toward a time now when hard decisions need to be made," he said at the end of his visit.
Kerry admitted a day before after meeting with the two leaders that there was skepticism and cynicism about his efforts to revive talks.
"I know this region well enough to know there is skepticism, in some quarters there is cynicism, and there are reasons for it. There have been bitter years of disappointment," he said. Still, he maintained: "It is our hope that by being methodical, careful, patient, but detailed and tenacious, that we can lay on a path ahead that can conceivably surprise people and certainly exhaust the possibilities for peace."
British foreign secretary William Hague was also in the region visiting with leaders on both sides and even visited the Bedouin community of Khan Al Ahmar between Jerusalem and Jericho, whose residents are under the threat of displacement.
On May 23, Hague was poignantly clear on where his country stands on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. "Israel has lost some of its support in Britain and in other European countries over time - this is something I've often pointed out to Israeli leaders -because of settlement activity, which we condemn,” he said.
"We strongly disagree with settlements on occupied land. Israel is a country we work with in many ways but we do disapprove of settlements,” he maintained, adding that: "We want to see both Israelis and Palestinians really commit themselves to the peace process while there is still a chance of a two-state solution."
In Khan al Ahmar, Hague listened to the residents’ grievances from Israeli efforts to push them out to make way for more settlement expansion. "We (in Britain) strongly condemn the building of settlements and recognise they are a severe threat to a two-state solution,” he told the people there.
On March 21, Israeli forces demolished two residential buildings in the Jabal al-Mukabbir in East Jerusalem. Earlier, they demolished two Palestinian homes in al-Tur, all under the pretext of unlicensed construction. Dozens of people have been left homeless from the demolitions.
A UNESCO fact-finding mission was supposed to arrive this week to look into Israeli measures in the Old City of Jerusalem and their impact on the archeological, cultural and heritage significance of the place, but was denied entry by Israel on May 20. Israel justified its decision by saying Palestinians were trying to politicize the visit.
"The Palestinians were not respecting the understandings,” an Israeli foreign ministry official said. “The visit was supposed to be professional, (but) they were taking measures that showed they were politicizing the event and not letting the delegation focus on professional sides of it," the official said.
UNESCO maintained that the mission was not cancelled, but postponed, the agency’s spokeswoman Sue Williams said.
The Palestinians said they expected Israel to pull something like this. “We weren't surprised by this decision because we believed that Israel's agreement to (allow the mission) was not convincing," minister of foreign affairs Riyad Al Malki said.
The Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt was reopened on May 22 after a five day closure. Egyptian soldiers and policemen closed the crossing following the kidnapping of seven Egyptian soldiers in Sinai, only reopening it after the soldiers were freed. Over 2,400 Palestinians had been stranded on both sides of the crossing during the days of the closure.
Extremist Israelis extended their attacks this week all the way to the Negev desert. On May 19, residents of the Retamim Kibbutz attacked the nearby Bedouin village of Bir Hadaj and set fire to a tent, according to head of the local village council, Salman Ibin Hamid
"The setters of Retamim are acting like they are in the West Bank," Ibn Hamid said. "These people have the mentality of the occupying settler to attack every Arab."
Finally, on May 23, the US appointed Gen. John Allen as special envoy on security issues in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. According to a US official, Allen will deal with the U.S. position on Israeli security needs and the security arrangements that would accompany the establishment of a future Palestinian state.
Al Nakba commemorated amid increasing settler attacks [May 12 - May 18]
Date posted: May 18, 2013
By MIFTAH
This week Palestinians commemorated the 65th anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophe of 1948 on May 15, with a variety of activities, demonstrations and events throughout the Palestinian territories and outside of its borders. Festivals were held in Ramallah and Nablus in addition to several protests and confrontations with Israeli occupation forces. In Jerusalem, clashes broke out between protesters and Israeli police and border guards when Palestinians commemorating Al Nakba, raising Palestinian flags and facing off with Jewish settlers and soldiers. Thirty people were wounded or arrested during the clashes in addition to six Israelis.
The Jerusalem clashes come at a time when settler break-ins to Al Aqsa have been on the rise amid increasing calls by extremist Jewish groups to make a presence at the compound. The break-ins have become a near daily event. Muslim worshippers and Palestinian youths have kept constant vigil at the mosque to stave off the break-ins which included settler groups who used children as a cover to enter the compound on the occasion of Shavuot.
Settlers in the West Bank have wreaked havoc this week as well. On May 17, three Palestinians were injured in clashes in Urif south of Nablus when dozens of settlers set fire to lands in three area-villages: Urif, Einabus, and Asira al-Qibliya. The settlers also attacked citizens and threw burning tires at people’s homes.
Jewish extremists attacked inside the Green Line as well. On May 14, extremists set fire to three cars and sprayed racist graffiti on a mosque south of Haifa, according to Israeli media reports.
"Price-tag" and "Eviatar," which is thought to refer to the name of a settler stabbed to death last week, were found on the mosque’s walls in addition to the Star of David. In Safed, even farther north, racist graffiti with the words "Arabs out" was found on walls in the city.
On May 13, Israeli settlers exhumed a number of graves and sprayed racist graffiti in the Sawiya village in Nablus. Ghassan Daghlas, head of the PA settlement activity file, said settlers from the Alia settlement were responsible for the damage.
On the same day settlers from Tel Hatimar begin building a religious school for children on Al Khader lands in the Bethlehem area.
The Israeli army meanwhile, uprooted over 1,200 olive tree saplings on May 16 and razed land Palestinian farmer in the northern West Bank, according to Daghlas. He said the army dug up over 40 dunums of farm land and demolished a water tank and stone walls in Ras Karker, near Nablus.
On May 17, three Palestinian laborers were wounded in Beit Ula northwest of Hebron after Israeli forces fired rubber-coated steel bullets and unleashed police dogs at them according to Issa al-Amla, coordinator for the popular struggle committee. He said Omar Al-Amla, 31, and Abdulkadir Al-Amla, 28, suffered multiple dog bites to the neck and hands. A third laborer, Jihad Saleem, was shot in the leg.
In Jerusalem on May 17, Israeli forces raided the home of Iyad al-Awar and insisted on taking his two children 6-year-old Qassam and 5-year-old Nasrallah for “interrogation”. While their father prevented the forces from arresting his boys, Israeli soldiers handed him a warrant ordering him to bring his children to the Russian Compound for questioning.
"We arrived to the Russian Compound and the troops wanted to take my kids for investigation; I refused and they beat me in the ear and the leg. My kids started crying and were so scared from the troops. They took my kids by force," al-Awar said.
Israeli Intelligence officers apparently questioned the children about their detained cousin Shadad, and asked if they had seen him throwing stones or Molotov cocktails at Israeli forces, Al Awar said.
On the same day however, Palestinians scored a tiny victory in the Jerusalem suburb of Abu Dis when they were able to tear a hole through part of the separation wall. Protesters marking the Nakba anniversary ripped a 4-meter hole in it, eyewitnesses said. Clashes ensued between the protesters and Israeli soldiers who fired tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets. Several injuries were reported.
Peace Now reported on May 16 that the Israeli government planned to grant retroactive approval to four West Bank settlement outposts it had previously pledged to at least partially demolish.
The Israeli state attorney's office said that settlers had purchased the private Palestinian land on which they built, thus paving the way for the government to give its blessing.
"In the response, the government declares its intention to legalize four outposts, in isolated areas," Peace Now said in a statement, adding that the strategy was an affront to US Secretary of State John Kerry's efforts to revive dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. "The intention to legalize outposts as new settlements is no less than a slap in the face of Secretary Kerry's new peace process," Peace Now said.
On May 14, Hamas and Fatah agreed in Cairo to form a national unity government within three months during which they would finalize and approve the Palestine National Council elections law. The two sides, represented by Fatah leader Azzam Al Ahmad and Hamas politburo member Mousa Abu Marzouq, came to the agreement under Egyptian sponsorship and said President Abbas would immediately begin talks on the new government formation. Once the government is formed, general elections can be held.
