It is Naksa Day, and we are still living with its consequences.
Even in Egypt, despite the 1973 War and the return of Sinai, we continue to live with — and suffer from — its regional repercussions.
We have also failed to learn, or perhaps have forgotten, many of the lessons that we, as Egyptians and Arabs, should have drawn from that defeat — politically before militarily.
The same underlying causes not only still exist in Cairo, but across capitals throughout the Arab world, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf.
This year, on the 59th anniversary of the Naksa, Haaretz published yet another bombshell for the Israeli public under the headline, "We Were Ordered to Kill": The 1967 Nakba That Israelis Don't Know About.
These testimonies expose a stark, unbridgeable gap between Israel’s carefully curated collective memory and the brutal reality of 1967.
In other words, they tear away the false narrative propagated by Israel’s military propaganda machine—a myth fed for decades to the Western world and the Israeli public to frame theirs as “the most moral army in the Middle East, if not the universe.”
The leftist-liberal Israeli newspaper revealed that newly uncovered documents indicate that 300,000 Arabs were expelled or forcibly displaced from the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights amid systemic violence, looting, and wholesale destruction.
Among the leaked files was a 1967 memorandum from Israel’s legal advisor famous judge Theodor Meron, explicitly warning senior Israeli officials that the forced expulsion of Palestinian civilians constituted "a serious violation of the Geneva Convention."
What the Israeli army perpetrated in the Sinai was mentioned only briefly in the Haaretz piece, primarily because those other captured territories remain under Israeli occupation today, unlike the Sinai, which Egypt successfully regained. (I will review the specific atrocities committed on the Egyptian front in a separate, upcoming post).
To be frank, nothing in Haaretz’s report about Israeli war crimes was new to me as an Egyptian, nor would it be new to most Arabs.
Egyptians and Palestinians have been shouting these truths to a deaf world—especially to the West—for nearly six decades.
Yet, despite a mountain of archival evidence and countless firsthand survivor and victim testimonies, much of the global community only began paying attention when an Israeli newspaper published the soldiers and victimizers’ letters.
A Note on Historical Context and Language
Before we dive into the archives, I must clarify an important linguistic choice in my translations. In translating the summer 1967 press reports detailing the tragic exodus from the West Bank, I have intentionally preserved the original text’s use of the terms "Arab refugees" and "Arab residents" rather than modernizing them to "Palestinians."
While a modern audience automatically views these events through a specific Palestinian national lens, the nationalized Egyptian press of 1967 was operating under a dual legacy. First was the linguistic residue of the British Mandate, which categorized the region strictly into "Arabs and Jews." Second was the ideological peak of Nasserite Pan-Arabism, which framed the defense of Palestine not as an isolated local conflict, but as a collective Arab responsibility.
Ironically, preserving this older vocabulary completely dismantles modern Zionist propaganda claiming that Egypt "invented" the Palestinian identity in the mid-1960s. The archival record demonstrates a deeply rooted population whose distinct connection to the land was so universally understood that reporters used the local and regional terms interchangeably.
I used both the AUC Rare Books and Collections Online library as well as the Torath Misr Official website, which is still in Beta phase
On June 28, 1967, just three weeks after the defeat, Egypt's Akher Saa Magazine (Issue No. 1705) published a blistering, boots-on-the-ground investigative report from Amman.
It was filed by a trailblazing Egyptian war correspondent named Maryam Robin. Her dispatch detailed the exact same systematic war crimes that Haaretz "discovered" decades later.
The report was featured on the magazine’s illustrated cover—drawn by the legendary Egyptian cartoonist Mostafa Hussein—under the bold title: "In Photos: The Genocidal War Unleashed by the Israeli Army Against the Refugees."
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| Mostafa Hussein's cover for issue No.1705 "28 June 1967" restored by Google Gemini |
In the immediate wake of the defeat, Akher Saa’s covers bypassed photographs for powerful illustrations created by a team of staff artists who would later become Egypt's most celebrated painters and illustrators. Every single cover carried a unified psychological theme: resilience, defiance, and rebuilding.
Robin opened her frontline report with words that still pierce the chest
Read this report and don't cry—it is not the time for crying. Read it to your friends and relatives, to your children. Read it aloud, so it becomes fuel—fuel that fires the vengeance on the day of vengeance.
These words may sound harsh to a modern reader. But when you digest the depths of the reporting, you understand exactly why she wrote them—and why her editors, overseen by the iconic Editor-in-Chief Youssef El-Sebai, chose to print that raw preface unaltered.
Another prominent subheading within the text set the stage for the grim accounts inside: “Israeli Soldiers Accused of Looting Arab Homes in the West Bank.”
According to Robin’s reporting, more than 150,000 Palestinian refugees crossed the Jordan River to the East Bank in the chaotic weeks following the June 5 attack. For the vast majority, this was a cruel second exodus; they had already been ethnically cleansed from Jaffa and Haifa during the 1948 Nakba.
.png "Palestinian Refugees in 1967 in Jordan") |
| One of the photos I managed to restore from the issue using Google Gemini showing Palestinian refugees at one of the refugee camps in Jordan in June 1967 "Akher Saa/Akhbar Al Youm" |
Now, they were fleeing for their lives a second time—this time from East Jerusalem, Hebron, Jericho, and Tulkarm.
The refugees recounted horrifying scenes of Israeli aircraft targeting civilian refugee camps with napalm. They understood the strategic intent perfectly: it was an attempt to physically erase them, allowing Israel to turn to the international community and claim, "Look… the refugee problem is solved."
Among the photographs accompanying Robin's report is a grainy, haunting image of a little girl with severe napalm burns covering her hands and face.
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| The little Palestinian girl burned by napalm after arriving at the Refugee Camp in Jordan in June 1967 "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
That little girl had received zero medical attention; she and her family had simply been running through the hills for days.
The refugees also described Israeli planes sweeping at low altitudes over Jericho's Arab neighborhoods to drop a series of psychological warfare leaflets in Arabic, all bearing the signature of the "Israel Defense Forces."
The first leaflet ordered residents to abandon their homes immediately. The second warned them that any resistance would be met with summary execution. The third instructed anyone wishing to survive to hang a white flag over their home.
Just as in 1948 and the 1956 wars, a clear pattern emerged: Israeli soldiers executed young men of fighting age, then forced the women, the elderly, and the children toward the riverbanks at gunpoint, systematically clearing the West Bank for future annexation.
In its 1967 aggression, Israel drew no line between military targets and civilians.
Instead, its airstrikes heavily targeted Tulkarm, Qalqilya, and Jenin—areas of immense strategic value that it intended to use as bargaining chips for permanent annexation.
The military went so far as to bomb the refugee camps within these zones, a deliberate attempt to physically eliminate the displaced populations and permanently dissolve their status on the international stage.
To completely cut off Arab military logistics, Israel heavily bombarded and severed all the primary bridges spanning the Jordan River, turning the civilian escape into a deadly obstacle course.
At the King Abdullah I Bridge—which historically linked the direct highway from Jerusalem to Amman—hundreds of displaced people fleeing certain death had to throw themselves into the currents without boats.
Local volunteers from neighboring Jordanian border villages rushed to the banks to construct an emergency lifeline, stringing thick, heavy ropes across the riverbed.
Elderly men, women, and children clung to these ropes, wading on foot through the waters to reach safety.
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| Children, women and the elderly crossing the Jordan River in June 1967 Restored by Google Gemini "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
Yet these refugees had not fled out of mere panic or fear.
For the majority, the choice was made because they had no other choice: Israeli soldiers had stormed their homes, weapons drawn, demanding they evacuate within minutes or face systematic execution one by one.
Before forcing them out, the soldiers looted the properties in front of the homeowners, even stripping jewelry and watches straight from their wrists.
On the riverbank, Robin encountered an elderly man sitting in the dust, weeping uncontrollably while surrounded by onlookers.
He had been completely caught off guard by the war while visiting his son, who worked in Amman.
Desperate to return to his wife and children in Hebron, he spent days at the crossing, begging the armed Israeli soldiers guarding the opposite side to let him pass.
He spent days on the East Bank trying to reason with the Israeli soldiers stationed with their weapons on the other side of the bridge, but to no avail. They prevent any citizen from entering, even if he is an elderly man.
Robin heard how the man at last found his old wife, and his son's children were heading toward the river. He tried to encourage her to cross, but she hesitated. He asked one of the citizens to take the children.
The man carried the two little girls on his shoulders and walked with them. At the midpoint of the river, he lost his balance, the two girls fell, and they drowned immediately before he could save them.
After saving himself, he managed to retrieve their bodies from the shore and handed them to their grandfather, who decided to bury them right there on the riverbank.
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| The Palestinian refugees, upon reaching the Eastern Bank of River Jordan in June 1967. I could not restore the photo due to its quality, "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
The photo above had that caption: "A photo showing the banks of the Jordan River that hosted dozens of graves for children and the elderly who were unable to continue living after the terror and exhaustion."
This was not the first tragedy, but one of hundreds of incidents repeated daily. A large family consisting of 12 members managed to flee in a private car to the Jordan River.
Along the way, an elderly woman collapsed. She took her last breath due to the shock and exhaustion.
Her family members could do nothing but weep over her in a very low voice, out of fear of the Israeli soldiers stationed nearby.
They lost two or three of their members during the escape, especially the elderly and children who could not endure the long march under a hail of bullets.
They left their elderly grandmother, in her clothes, buried on the West Bank of the river, while her husband, children, and grandchildren crossed the river to continue their journey toward Amman.
Maryam Robin visited the Wadi Al-Dalil refugee camp, which was located sixty kilometres away from the city of Amman.
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| The tents of the Palestinian refugees at Wadi Al-Dalil Camp in June 1967 Restored by Google Gemini "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
Set by the UNRWA right after the war in 1967, it housed about ten thousand citizens, with thousands of tragedies, all of whom were displaced from the West Bank.
There, she met Amina Khalil from Jerusalem, one of those displaced citizens who recounted the horrors on her way to Amman.
"The world before us was turning to ashes, and the mountains into a blaze of fire. The planes were riding us all along the road... I saw with my own eyes a plane dropping a bomb on a civilian car carrying a large family, turning it into a blaze of fire..." She said.
Robin went to Wadi Al-Khalil refugee camp, which housed more than 10,000 refugees, where she met a young woman sitting on the sand, unable to move from the severe pain caused by wounds on her feet from her four-day walk from the village of Al-Azariya near Jerusalem to the Zarqa area.
"I was outside washing my children's clothes when the Israeli planes suddenly appeared, bombing the houses and streets," she told Robin. "I dropped the laundry, grabbed my children, and ran into a shelter. We hid there all day."
When she finally emerged, she found her husband, but the respite was short-lived.
That night, the planes returned, dropping blinding illumination flares as Palestinian resistance fighters (Fedayeen) engaged them. The following morning, Israeli armor rolled into the streets.
She witnessed an Israeli paratrooper land directly in front of her home, only to be instantly ambushed and killed by local Fedayeen before a helicopter could retrieve his body.
Realizing the neighborhood was turning into a free-fire zone, she packed her children into a crowded transport vehicle to Jericho. Every time planes appeared overhead, the passengers would dive out into the ditches.
After surviving the napalm raids in Jericho and the forced evacuation orders, she trekked on foot to the East Bank, arriving in Amman three days later with nothing but the torn clothes on her body.
The Egyptian journalist met also a pregnant woman in her ninth month, weeping, her feet showing deep cuts from the long walk and asked her why she was crying, and she recounted how she fled from Jericho with her life, the life of her unborn child and the life of her injured boy “Majed” while she knew nothing about the other three teens who were volunteers in the civil defense.
“While I was in my home in Jericho, I was surprised by five Israeli soldiers getting out of their vehicle and heading to my house. They knocked on the door, calling out. I was alone. Fearing for my life, I hesitated to open up but finally did. One of them spoke to me in fluent Arabic, ordering me to leave the house immediately.” She said, adding that she tried to reason with them to no avail.
“I tried to take a blanket to protect my young child from the cold, but they refused. They asked me about the rest of my children, but I didn't utter a word and walked out.” She said.
“However, one of them stopped me, ripped off my gold earrings and a gold watch from my hand, and expelled me from my home barefoot, alongside my small child.” She added describing how she walked for two full days and finally managed to get into a private car with her child, and from there, after two days, she reached Hebron.
The report quoted a middle-aged woman named Umm al-Abd, from the Hebron region, who was surrounded by many children—her grandchildren, the children of her sons. However, she knows nothing about her four adult sons, who were among the Fedayeen (freedom fighters).
She felt as though she was having a disturbing nightmare; she could not believe how she arrived after four days. All she kept repeating was that she went with her six grandchildren to one of the houses to take shelter within its walls.
After a few hours, everyone decided to move to another neighbour's house. From one house to another, trying to protect their lives, they eventually found themselves in Jericho.
In Jericho, the bombardment intensified, and the city turned into a sheet of fire, while dozens of cars were transformed into heaps of ash or charcoal.
Along the entire road, there are thousands of dead and wounded.
The Israeli army did not differentiate between military personnel and civilians; it decided to annihilate them to the very last one.
The West Bank was left behind in complete ruin and destruction...
I read the report of Maryam Robin, and I see hundreds of photos and videos from Gaza and the West Bank in the past three years.
Abducting Egyptian and Arab diplomats in East Jerusalem
Tucked away in the very same June 1967 issue of Akher Saa, I found a small news item published by the late veteran war and regional news journalist Gamil Aref. It detailed a flagrant violation of international diplomatic immunity that has been largely scrubbed from modern international diplomatic memory.
During the capture of East Jerusalem, the Israeli military actively hunted down and arrested Arab diplomats. Because Egypt’s official political name in 1967 was the United Arab Republic (UAR), the text refers to him as the "Arab Consul."
Here is the word-by-word translation.
“A report from the Old City of Jerusalem, which is occupied by Israeli forces, states that Israeli soldiers looted the Arab consuls’ homes where the Arab diplomats’ families were transferred to one of the shelters in New Jerusalem.
Muhammad Al-Mulla, the Arab Consul, had taken refuge in the Belgian Consulate building, which is adjacent to the Arab Consulate building, along with the other Arab Consuls
Israeli forces arrived with tanks and stormed the Belgian Consulate building, then arrested the Arab Consul and the consuls of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon — as well as an employee of the Arab League named Muhammad Tawfiq, who had been based in Jerusalem to oversee refugee affairs.
Muhammad Al-Mulla, the Arab Consul in Jerusalem, had contacted the Arab Embassy in Amman by telephone two hours before the fall of the Old City of Jerusalem, and said that he and the Arab Consulate staff were safe.”
Historical records show that these captured diplomats were eventually released several days later following fierce, immediate intervention by international channels.
A little mix-up mistake here was that the name of the Egyptian ambassador was Ahmed Al-Mulla, who turned out to be the father of former Oil and Mineral Resources Minister in Mostafa Madbouly’s cabinet and current MP Tarek Al-Mulla.
Uncovering this historical footprint was a stunning revelation, as it is virtually non-existent in modern Egyptian accounts. But fair enough—today, very few even remember that we had Egyptian forces stationed on the Jordanian front in the first place.
At the time, the catastrophic and overwhelming scale of the collapse on our own domestic Sinai front completely consumed the Egyptian public, leaving little room to process the shocking events unfolding far away in East Jerusalem.
From East Bank to West Bank
The next dispatch from Maryam Robin from Jordan would be published in Issue No. 1706 on 5 July 1967
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| The cover of issue No.1706 on 5 July 1967 of Akher Saa by Egyptian painter Mounir Kanaan |
"The most dangerous assignment among the Refugees in the Area Around the Jordan River!" read the title of the story that ran on two pages in the magazine.
Robin continued reporting how Israel continued to expel Arab residents from the West Bank of the Jordan River to the East Bank while systematically blocking displaced citizens from returning to reunite with their families.
Overnight, thousands of families found themselves stranded and homeless along the riverbanks. Fathers have been completely cut off from their children, with one part of the family trapped on one side and the rest stuck on the other.
Civilians once used the Allenby and King Abdullah bridges to cross between the banks of this river—until Israeli airstrikes destroyed them, severing even this fragile connection.
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| King Abdullah Bridge - Wikipedia "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
The Allenby Bridge — named after Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby, the British military commander who invaded Jerusalem in 1917, and who later served as High Commissioner of Egypt, where he became so deeply despised that to this day effigies bearing his name are burned every Sham El-Nessim in Port Said.
The bridge was later renamed King Hussein Bridge. It had been bombed during the 1948 war and destroyed again in 1967.
With all infrastructure shattered, letters have become the sole means of communication. Yet even this lifeline is unreliable; Israeli forces frequently intercept the mail and dump the letters into the river.
Last week in June 1967, Red Cross vehicles flying the committee’s flag arrived at the riverbank. To aid the Red Cross, the Jordanian government provided several of its own vehicles.
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| The Jordanian government assigned its vehicles to the Red Cross in the summer of 1967 "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
The delegation of the International Red Cross began its work in Jordan in June 1967, as Jordan found itself facing the influx of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in June. Mr Jean mentioned in Maryam Robin’s report was veteran Swiss diplomat Jean Courvoisier.
The immediate dilemma was clear: How could the two teams exchange thousands of letters with the bridge entirely destroyed?
Someone suggested wading across. The Jordan River did not have a single boat available, yet the team watched as hundreds of displaced civilians—men, women, and the elderly—risked their lives to wade across to the East Bank.
Without hesitation, Courvoisier, his colleague, and a committee photographer stripped off their outer clothing and plunged into the water.
Under the watchful eyes of heavily armed Israeli soldiers stationed on the cliffs above, they waded across to meet their West Bank colleagues.
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| The Red Cross officials had to wade across the Jordan River along with Palestinian Refugees in July 1967, "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
While the Red Cross committees met, the human tragedy unfolded around them.
A young woman called Fairouz Haddad waded into the water to reach the Red Cross officials, begging for passage to Jerusalem to see her only child.
She explained that she had been trapped in Amman when the war broke out.
Helpless, a committee member informed her that handling cross-border travel authorizations fell outside their jurisdiction.
Haddad then confronted the Israeli officers on the ridge, shouting across the water, pleading to return to her only child in Jerusalem.
An Israeli soldier coldly ordered her back: "Return to where you came from." Moments later, warning shots shattered the air, echoing over the river.
Then there was Mohammad, a boy no older than ten.
He had been left entirely alone at a police post on the opposite bank when the war started.
Once the gunfire ceased, he tried repeatedly to cross the river to join his mother and siblings, who were waiting for him in a makeshift tent on the West Bank.
Although his mother begged the Israeli soldiers and explained her plight, they refused to let the child pass.
Mohammad tried to seize the opportunity of the Red Cross men's presence to cross the river, but Israeli rifles immediately fired bullets at him to terrify him and forced him to return to the East Bank under the watch of the Red Cross men.
Israel strictly refused to allow any person from the East Bank to the West Bank, even if it was a child, while it approved—and indeed expelled—thousands of citizens from the West Bank to the East Bank.
All of this was happening while the Red Cross men were still meeting. After about an hour, it was agreed that the letters would be delivered to the West Bank.
The Red Cross men utilized the Palestinian citizens stationed on the bank.
They utilized them to carry dozens of letter boxes and cross with them through the river while their colleagues stationed on the West Bank received them, where three donkeys carried them and travelled with them to the Red Cross cars in the Western region.
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| This was the way the Red Cross officials found to transfer the letters between the East and the West banks in July 1967 via the River Jordan "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
But what do the citizens write to their families in these letters that they send via the International Committee of the Red Cross?
The high demand for writing those letters led to the disappearance of the specialized Red Cross forms for them from the very first day.
And in front of the Red Cross centre, the Egyptian journalist found thousands of people gathering here and there, and everyone was thinking and silent. They did not begin writing as they thought what to write, and whom to send, to where it should be addressed, and the important question of all: Would the letter reach its destination or not ??
For example, Fathi Mahmoud Yassin, a young man in his twenties who left Ramallah a week before the battle for Damascus to take a law exam at the Faculty of Law at Damascus University.
When the war started, the university suspended studies, and he returned to Amman to make his way to Ramallah.
But he was surprised to find that transportation was completely cut off and that the battle was continuous, and that the people of Ramallah—some of them had been displaced from it on their way to Jericho.
And Fathi searched for his mother, his father, his sister, and his brother in the streets of Amman. He rented a car to [the district of] Al-Agwar [The Jordan Valley], and in front of the Allenby Bridge, “Robin used its old common name; Jericho bridge”, he went down trying to search for his mother, his father, and his sister, asking, "Has anyone among you seen them?" But there was no answer.
Broke and unable to eat or sleep from the sheer exhaustion of it all, he returned once more to Amman—yet he still refused to give up hope.
"What will I write to my mother and father in this letter? My family is in Ramallah, my sister is in Jerusalem, the third is in Shu'fat, the eldest brother is in Birzeit and the second works at the InterContinental Hotel in Jerusalem." Fathii wondered
"I am Fathi Mahmoud Yassin... I returned from Damascus to Amman safely, and I am asking about you, hoping you will reassure me as quickly as possible... I am anxious and cannot sleep until I know what your news is..." In the end, he wrote those few words before wondering what address he would use as a stranger in Amman.
In the end, he placed his address at the Zahran Police Station, hoping that he would get an answer from his family that week.
Some citizens came and donated some clothes to Fathi, so he, in turn, donated them to a family more in need than him.
After that, and seeing what was happening to his people in their newest exile, Fathi decided to participate with those who gather donations and aid to present them to the needy who possess nothing.
And another tragedy that shook Maryam Robin’s feelings and my own feelings after 59 years.
“I could hardly believe it”, Robin wrote about it.
It is the tragedy of Saadiya. Married to her cousin, she resided in the village of Shuweika with her only infant child, Nader.
And when the aggression began, she fled with her husband to Nablus until she arrived at the Salt region.
And on the road, where she felt hunger, thirst, and extreme exhaustion, she abandoned her only child under a tree on the road.
“ I left the boy because he would die of hunger from the lack of nursing after the milk dried from my breasts." Saadiya wept as she told Robin, who was still in disbelief.
The woman continued to wonder where Nader would be then and what his fate was.
Other questions spun in her head as she, too, stood in front of the police center to write to her father, Haj Hamdan
"I have arrived with my husband without my child in Amman. I ask about you, my mother Halima, my father, my brother Salim, and my sister Rashida... Are you well?.. I am waiting for the reply from you so that I can be reassured about you." She wrote
And her address was through the Red Crescent Society because she resides in the open air near Amman.
As for the story of Faisal, he was a young man in his thirties who returned from Kuwait, where he had been an expat for three years working as a barber.
He had left his three children with their mother, and he returned to them days before the aggression.
He had with him a gift for his father, Abdul Qadir, another for his brother Muhiyyiddin, a third for his sister, Mervat, and many gifts for his wife, but he was surprised while in Amman by the aggression which stood between him and them.
He was in Amman while his family was in Jerusalem, and he lived confused and anxious, wondering if his children and his wife were well and whether his mother, his sister, and his father were alive.
Faisal spent all his time in the streets of Amman wandering aimlessly, searching for them... and finally he found himself in front of the police center to write to them.
"To my father, Abdul Qadir Ahmad Al-Basyouni, originally from Lydda previously, who resides in the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood, and to my wife and children... I am present in Amman after my return from Kuwait. I ask about you, and I request that you reassure me immediately from your side, because I am in extreme anxiety over you."He wrote.
When the Red Cross men delivered thousands of letters to their colleagues on the West Bank, they were surprised that their colleagues did not carry any letters at all from the citizens on the West Bank.
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| The letters from East Bank to the West Bank via the River Jordan "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
Israel has refused to allow Arab citizens to send letters to their families in Jordan and Arab countries via the Red Cross.
Ongoing forced displacement
Next dispatch from Maryam Robin in Amman to Akher Sa'a in Cairo, published in Issue No. 1708 on 19 July 1967, the story had made the cover of the magazine — teased in the words: "Israel Expels Arabs Through Terror from the West Bank to Jordan." |
| The cover of issue No.1708 by Egyptian Painter Mounir Kanaan "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
Inside, a two-page pictorial report documented the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, by which point the number of displaced had already climbed to 180,000.
The report ran under the title: "A Photographic Documentary of Conviction: This Is How Israel Is Expelling the Residents of the West Bank."
One photograph in the report’s first page showed Arabs crossing the ruins of the Allenby Bridge to the Eastern Bank.
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| Refugees crossing the destroyed Allenby Bridge "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
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| The Israeli truck loaded with the Palestinians' furniture before dumping it out in the open in July 1967 "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
Israeli transport vehicles arrived to expel the Arab residents, dumping their furniture out in the open near the village of Silwan.
Today, Silwan finds itself once again on the verge of another devastating episode of forced displacement
A third photograph showed residents of a small village queuing for water being distributed by tanker trucks — after the Israeli authorities cut off the water supply from the well serving the area, leaving its people exposed to thirst and hunger in the aftermath of the aggression.
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| Water trucks in the West Bank in July 1967 ring a bell in Gaza 2026 "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
Robin reported that Israel was continuing, systematically, to expel Arabs from the West Bank into Jordan, and was actively planning the demographic liquidation of Palestinian communities in Qalqilya, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm, and Jerusalem.
Israeli forces were deploying every available means of pressure, violence, terror, and intimidation to force residents from their homes — driving them toward the Jordan River by cutting off water supplies to Palestinian towns, seizing and looting flour stores and provisions, and depriving entire communities of essential foodstuffs.
Despite Israeli propaganda efforts to obscure this, Robin wrote, the expansionist plan was becoming unmistakable: to accelerate Jewish immigration from around the world, settle the occupied lands, and confiscate Palestinian property across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The plan's mechanics were laid bare in a specific incident Robin documented: Israeli forces were simultaneously refusing to allow hundreds of displaced Arabs to return across the river to their families in the West Bank — while pressuring those already on the Eastern Bank to formally cross over, after stripping them of their money and forcing them to sign written pledges of "vacating and leaving their homes in the West Bank and not returning to them."
A legal instrument of dispossession, produced and administered in the open, in the summer of 1967. It reads, in 2026, like a blueprint.
As for those Arabs who remained in the West Bank under Israeli military rule, Hamdi Kan'an, the mayor of Nablus, described their situation plainly: "Poverty, pressure, and unemployment are dominating the residents of the occupied West Bank, and worsening day by day."
A further page of the report carried additional photographs.
The first photo showed Arabs residents searching for their belongings amid the rubble in Qalqilya, which was subjected to the most severe forms of destruction and devastation by Israeli artillery and aircraft.
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| Destruction in Qalqilya in June 1967 "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
The town is located on the armistice line near Tel Aviv, according to Robin’s caption.
Another photo showed a young man from Qalqilya who had fled carrying his belongings alongside his old granddad.
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| Escaping from Qalqilya in summer 1967 "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
The third showed a mother sitting with her children atop their bundled possessions, waiting to cross to the Eastern Bank after being forced out of Nablus.
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| The mother and her children from Qalqilya in the summer of 1967 "Akhbar Al-Youm/Akher Saa" |
Robin's caption for the two images read: "Fleeing the violent terror of the Israeli forces — this young man carried his belongings and left Qalqilya with his family… while this mother sat with her children atop their belongings, waiting to cross to the Eastern Bank after they were forced to leave Nablus."
In the same issue, tucked inside the women's section, I found this small item under the title: "How Do the Refugees of Gaza Live While Awaiting Return?"
"Far from home, from son, and from husband, she came displaced from Gaza to live among 8,000 refugees sheltered in Mudiriyat al-Tahrir — after the enemy stripped her of her possessions, but could not strip her of the craft that had always sustained her… The refugee woman sat weaving thread into intricate embroidery of vibrant colors, multiple patterns, and precise geometric designs — her hands in constant motion, trying to ease the misery she was living through."
Mudiriyat al-Tahrir — the Liberation Directorate City — was a massive land-reclamation project in the Behaira Governorate of the western Nile Delta, launched by Nasser in the 1950s as a flagship socialist development initiative, reclaiming desert land for agriculture and resettling people there.
That it also sheltered Palestinian refugees from Gaza in the summer of 1967 is a detail I had never encountered before — and one that is almost entirely absent from the English-language historical record.
Akher Saa called on its readers to support these women by encouraging the traditional craft that the daughters of Gaza have mastered.
Egypt's Ministry of Social Affairs was already doing its part: it had established a center in the village of Omar ibn al-Khattab where Palestinian refugee women could practice their embroidery full-time, with the work being marketed on their behalf.
I stopped here. I did not go further, and I have not checked other publications.
That’s one magazine, one Egyptian magazine, right after the war, in less than a month.
Now, can you mention how many war crimes and violations of international law were committed by the Israeli army, as mentioned in those news reports in 1967?
Were the same violations mentioned in the same way in the Western press?
The Western embassies knew very well what happened.
I read all this, and I feel furious. The World has been failing Palestinians for a very long time.
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