Palestinians who lived through Naksa call ongoing war 'genocide'

By Anadolu staff

JERUSALEM (AA) - Palestinians on Wednesday marked the 57th anniversary of the June 1967 war with Israel amid the ongoing onslaught on the Gaza Strip.

The 1967 Six-Day War, known as the Naksa or Setback, also marked the displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homelands, resulting in the defeat of Arab armies of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.

As a result of the war, Israel took control of the Palestinian-populated West Bank, Gaza Strip, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Syria’s Golan Heights.

While the first displacement of Palestinians had taken place in May 1948 soon after the establishment of the Jewish state, the second large-scale displacement happened in 1967.

- Genocidal war

Mohammad Bayan Abdel-Wahhab, 80, who lived through the 1967 war said "it can't be compared to the ongoing war."

"What we are living today is a genocide, not a war," he said, adding that what the Palestinian people in Gaza are experiencing was never seen before.

77-year-old Mohammad Radwan told Anadolu that the ongoing Israeli war is the fiercest war ever experienced by the Palestinian people.

"We lived in a state of expulsion and displacement in the past, but what we experience today was never seen before," Radwan added.

- Ethnic Cleansing

Maha Salameh, 59, who sits in her tent in Deir al-Balah, a city in central Gaza, said the similarity between the current war and the Naksa war is the "ethnic cleansing of Palestinians."

She added that Israel during its wars deliberately sought to make demographic changes in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Several Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, shared plans to "voluntarily expel" Palestinians from Gaza to other countries.

- Killings and destruction

Fathi Abu Marzouq, 63, said the ongoing Israeli war in Gaza is "a continuation to the approach of genocidal war against the Palestinian people which started in 1948."

"Israel seeks to obliterate the Palestinian cause, and steal the land by killing Palestinians and destroying their areas," Abu Marzouq said.

He recalled what happened in 1967 when Palestinian villages were destroyed to force the residents to leave.

But he added that "this war remains the fiercest and harshest on the Palestinian people in terms of the daily Israeli massacres against Palestinians."

"We will remain steadfast here [in Gaza] and we will not repeat the tragedies [of expulsion] that we experienced in the past," Fathi Abu Marzouq added.

As a result of the 1967 war, 300,000 Palestinians were displaced from Gaza and the West Bank. Most of them escaped to Jordan.

In November 1967, the UN Security Council in resolution number 242 urged Israel to withdraw from the territories it had occupied in the 1967 war.

Israel only withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982, as part of a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt enacted in 1979.

Yet, Israel continues to flout UN resolutions calling to end its occupation to the Palestinian territories as well as to the Syrian Golan Heights.

*Writing by Ahmed Asmar