by Fatima AbdulKarim
RAMALLAH, June 5 (Xinhua) -- Palestinians on Monday mark the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the 1967 war between five Arab armies and Israel, ending after six days with a shocking defeat that left Palestinians feeling abandoned since then.
While people around the world refer to it as 1967 war, Arabs call it as 1967 defeat; a day that still overshadows the entire socio-political scene for Palestinians.
Around 325,000 Palestinians fled their homes, including some 150,000 who were already refugees since 1948 war, thus known as the second Palestinian exodus.
Khaled Batrawi remembers clearly that day, when as a child, he saw the first war plane approaching him and his play mate in the neighborhood, marking the beginning of the war in his memory.
"I remember that it was the beginning of the summer holiday, so we were happy to be relieved from school. I was playing with Bassem Mustafa Rantisi, our neighbor, close to their home. There were no phones back then, but we were both close to home and the central station of the Jordanian battalion. I immediately noticed that two planes were flying at low altitude near the battalion, for the first time, we see something like this; small sized planes in color of camouflaged army suits," said Batrawi.
At that point, he recalls "Bassem's mother came out to us saying 'get in, get in, there is a war, the war has started!'"
He tells of the confusion of the first few hours, especially that few information was available. The main source was the Egyptian radio broadcasting all the way from Cairo, which was mainly conveying morale-boosting messages, but not the full truth about the situation.
With eyes roaming as if to catch a memory from a flood, Batrawi described how his family sat at home thinking of what to do, until his father came back from work.
"We sat at home not knowing what to do or what to decide, there were no phones, but there were warplanes hovering atop of us and there was news spreading that the war has begun, and the famous news anchor Ahmad Sa'id from the Voice of Arab radio station started broadcasting news about a plane falling here and withdrawal of the enemy there and the Arab joint army are defending all areas," he said.
He said "we realized that it's a real war! And that something was happening that lead to my mother's expression of concern, as she remembered that 1948 war, worrying that this would be another catastrophe to the Palestinians? We were already displaced in 1948, but where would we go now?"
Through his record from childhood, he recalls the moment they decided to leave their home which was adjacent to the Jordanian battalion station, fearing it would be shelled.
"This was on the first day. My father came and said the place is not safe, so let us move to Khalil Sawahri's house, which is approximately 300 meters away from our home, but far enough from the central battalion," he explained.
Batrawi, 57, is an engineer working and living in central West Bank city Ramallah, speaks about how the fear took over him as a child, fear that increased day after day the more Israeli tanks roamed the city.
"A state of panic began to spread once the Israeli tanks started to enter," said Batrawi, but then depicted exactly how "they fired a shell that entered through Abu Ali Nasser's home (neighbor) all the way through and went into the house we were in, through a wall that my mother leaned her head to a few minutes before, then stopped inside a closet in the bedroom."
On June 11 of 1967, a cease-fire was signed. Israel seized control of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
"After five days, the picture became clear to us, through what we were told by the elders. That the Jews have now seized control over the 1967 territories completely, and then came the famous speech by Abdul Nasser, the Egyptian President, in which he announced that the Arab armies were defeated and has submitted his resignation," said Batrawi declaring the end of a phase in the struggle under occupation and the start of another.
He said, from that point, people's forces joined to assist one another, and at the same time, focusing on peaceful, popular resistance.
Batrawi does not hide his pessimism. He speaks with a sad tone about how big hopes were blown with the wind, after the Arab regimes decided to withdraw from the war on the second day, leaving Palestinians in the occupied territories to face their new reality on their own.
The Jordan-Israel peace treaty known as Wadi Araba, was signed in October 1994, after the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords with Israel, while the Egypt-Israel peace treaty was already signed in 1977, in a historic move by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to promote peace in the region, acknowledging it as the only way out.
In the eyes of Batrawi, the general landscape 50 years after the "1967 defeat" shows lack of support to Palestinians, domestically, regionally and internationally, describing the situation as a series of events that anchors the occupation and Palestinian dependency.
Before biding Xinhua crew farewell, Batrawi said he doesn't believe that the war will be ever repeated, because he believes that colonization takes new forms today, and that economic weakness will deepen Palestinians dependency on the Israeli occupation, if things status quo continues.
He ended the interview by saying "The political situation 50 years later is not in our favor of the Palestinian cause," simply describing the situation as being "a long term series that has neither started in the 1967 war, nor in the 1948."
"it is a historic long term series that aims at isolating the individual as socially introvert, without being able to take part in public interest in order to deepen his/her dependency on the occupation," he said.
