umkahlil

In his introduction to Before Their Diaspora, Walid Khalidi describes Israel's application to "the newly occupied territories [1967] the very policy of systematic colonization, pursued by the Zionists in Palestine from the 1880s until 1948, that created the Palestine problem in the first place." He notes "Between June and September 1967, it expelled across the Jordan River some 250,000 inmates of the refugee camps located on the West Bank and Gaza Strip."

He continues, "Israel has facilitated its colonization of these territories through a whole gamut of administrative, legalistic, economic, psychological, and physical measures. Immediately after the cessation of fighting in June 1967, Israel annexed East Jerusalem and declared the 'unified' city its capital. The municipal boundaries were expanded to include large areas of Palestinian territory on the West Bank. Strategic parts of these areas were expropriated and housing projects completed in them to accommodate Jewish settlers 'returning home' from Russia and the United States. Bulldozers were dispatched into the Old City of Jerusalem to tear down venerable medieval Muslim religious buildings adjacent to the Wailing Wall. Dozens of Muslim family properties withing the Old City walls were seized in the name of 'public interest' and transferred to Jewish ownership. Extensive excavations were undertaken next to the foundations of the holiest of Muslim shrines without prior permission of the Muslim religious authorities. Three prosperous villages in the foothills around Latrun were literally erased from the map and their entire population expelled overnight."

Khalidi, Walid. Before Their Disapora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876-1948. Washington D.C.: Institute For Palestine Studies, 1991.