Marking 58 years since the Naksa, Palestinians remember the 1967 war as a second mass displacement that deepened Israel’s occupation and reshaped their ongoing struggle for return and liberation.
June 5 marks the anniversary of the Naksa — Arabic for “setback” — the day in 1967 when Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, Syria’s Golan Heights, and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula following its rapid military victory in the Six-Day War.
For Palestinians, it was the second great wave of dispossession after the Nakba of 1948, as some 300,000 were forcibly removed from their homes, many for the second time in less than two decades.
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The war began with a surprise Israeli air assault on Egyptian forces and ended within six days with the collapse of Arab resistance and massive territorial losses.
Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza brought the entirety of historic Palestine under its control — a status quo that remains largely unchanged to this day.
Although Israel withdrew from the Sinai in 1982 under a peace deal with Egypt, it entrenched its grip on the remaining territories, including the illegal annexation of the Golan Heights in 1981.
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Despite repeated UN resolutions — most notably Resolution 242 — calling for Israeli withdrawal from occupied lands, Israel has continued to expand settlements, particularly in the West Bank.
The 1993 Oslo Accords promised a roadmap to Palestinian statehood by 1999, but that vision was abandoned as Israel intensified its colonization of Palestinian land.
Today, as Palestinians endure another wave of mass displacement and destruction in Gaza — where nearly 55,000 people have been killed since October 2023 — the memory of the Naksa is a reminder that the cycle of dispossession continues.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
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