Free Articles from the Journal of Palestine Studies

Free Articles from the Journal of Palestine Studies

Naksa Day Remembered

On the forty-fourth anniversary of the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza Strip the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula during the 1967 war, the Institute for Palestine Studies is offering a few pertinent articles and documents from the Journal of Palestine Studies archives.

• Abdullah Schleifer presented the fall of Jerusalem from a military perspective in a 1971 article.

• Israel's victory over the Egyptians, Jordanians, and Syrians in June 1967 was so unexpected and sudden that outside forces were blamed for the disaster. Richard B. Parker examined the reasons why such suspicions were prevalent.

• A 2007 account of Jerusalem’s fall by Anwar al-Khatib, governor of the Jerusalem district, gave a sense of the utter disarray and confusion that reigned in the city in the days around the Israeli conquest, from the complete lack of preparedness, and the almost immediate collapse of any resistance

There were early stirrings of nonmilitary and indeed passive resistance to the occupation by the local establishment in the form of determined noncooperation with the Israeli authorities. These are reflected in several documents worth reviewing.

• One document showing this is the memorandum from the members of Jerusalem’s disbanded Municipal Council. It was a collective response to Israel’s attempt to secure their cooperation by dealing with each of them separately.

• The account by Shaykh Abd al-Hamid al-Sayih, the city’s most senior Muslim official, detailed the persistent attempts of the Israeli ministry of religious affairs to integrate Jerusalem’s religious hierarchy and Islamic courts and institutions into the Israeli system, the Muslim establishment’s countering moves, and the stalemate that ultimately led to al-Sayih’s deportation.

• The memorandum by Ruhi al-Khatib, Jerusalem’s deposed mayor, and several of his colleagues from the dissolved municipal council provided a low-key catalogue of the early measures by Israel in the city.

The 1967 war established the political geography for Palestine today, setting up an occupying military administration and the acquisition of territory through settlements.