Vanishing Palestine: The making of Israel’s occupation

On June 5, 1967, an unprovoked Israel invaded Palestinian, Egyptian, and Syrian territories at once.

Six days and over 300,000 Palestinian refugees later, it had occupied the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Golan Heights. 

It has been 49 years since that day, and the West Bank and Golan Heights remain illegally occupied, while the Gaza Strip has been crippled under a nine-year blockade that has denied 1.8 million Palestinians their rights to access medical equipment, clean water, food and materials necessary to rebuild homes, schools and hospitals destroyed in repeated Israeli bombardments.

While the 1967 invasion and subsequent occupation marked what Arabs called the “Naksa”, or a severe setback in their ambitions for Palestinian liberation, the policy implemented by Israel on those fateful days to illegally seize that land was merely the continuation of what occured during the founding of Israel, which is known as the “Nakba”, or catastrophe.