The Balfour Declaration Timeline In 100 Years

chronicles events leading to the Balfour declaration in 1917 and its catastrophic consequences for Palestinians and the region

The Balfour declaration

1516

Apr 10 1st Jewish ghetto established: Venice compels Jews to live in a specific area

The Ottomans seize Palestine from the Mamelukes and incorporate it within the Empire

1596

Oct 24 -26 Battle at Kerestes: Ottoman beat Austria-Hungary & Germany

The Ottomans begin compiling detailed taxation records and conduct a census in Palestine. The latter reveals a Muslim majority, a Christian minority and a tiny Jewish minority.

1871

Apr 16 German Empire ends all anti-Jewish civil restrictions

The Palestine Exploration Fund, a British society based in London which undertakes topographical and ethnographic surveys of Ottoman Palestine, begins producing detailed documentation of Palestine’s Arab, mainly Muslim population, and its majority Arab villages.

1882

May 15 May Laws-Tsar Alexander III bans Jews from living in rural Romania

Jul 6 14 Russian Jews from Bilu arrive in Jaffa, Palestine

Russia issues laws prohibiting Jews from living or owning property outside specific areas. In response Lovers of Zion organisations are formed to organise emigration to Palestine.

Sep 10 1st international conference to promote anti-semitism meets Dresden Germany (Congress for Safeguarding of Non-Jewish Interests)

1896

Apr 19 Herzl's "The Jewish State" is published

Austro-Hungarian writer Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, publishes Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews), in which he argues that Jews who want to leave Europe should head either to Argentina or, preferably, Palestine. Jews already had a nationality, he wrote, but they needed a homeland. Only the latter, he argued, would allow them to escape anti-Semitism and practice their faith freely.

1897

Mar 20 1st US orthodox Jewish Rabbinical seminary (RIETS) incorporates in NY

Apr 22 NYC Jewish newspaper "Forward" begins publishing (still active)

Jul 26 37.5 cm rainfall at Jewell, Maryland (state record)

Jul 27 14.75" (37.5 cm) of rainfall, Jewell, Maryland (state 24-hr record)

Dec 12 Anti-Jewish violence breaks out in Bucharest, Romania

At Herzl’s initiative the World Zionist Organisation is founded in Basle Switzerland. Its mandate, to establish a legal home for Jews in Palestine, sets the stage for the occupation of Palestine and the ensuing conflict.

1901

Jun 24 Jewish National Fund starts

The Jewish National Fund is founded. Focused on buying Palestinian land on which to build Jewish colonies, it becomes one of the principal conduits of colonization.

1903

Apr 6 The Kishinev pogrom in Bessarabia begins, forcing tens of thousands of Jews to later seek refuge in Israel and the Western world.

Aug 23 6th Zionist Congres, Theodor Herzl declares Jewish state

Oct 16 Homel, 1st Jewish self defense organization founded in Russia

The Zionist movement begins approaching European governments asking them to allocate territory for a Jewish state. Herzl asks King Victor Emmanuel of Italy about territory in North Africa (present-day Libya), an approach the king flatly rejects.

The British government offers the World Zionist Organisationland from itscolonies in east Africa to establish a homeland for Jews. The offer is rejected by a group led by Russian-British chemist Chaim Weizmann who insists on Palestine.

1914

Feb 28 Construction begins on Tower of Jewels for the Exposition (SF)

Ottoman Turkey enters World War I, siding with Germany, Austro-Hungary and Bulgariaagainst the Allies,  Britain, France, Russia, Italy and the United States.

The Jewish population in Palestine is 38,754 (5 per cent of the total) of which 12,332 are Ottoman subjects and the remainder new immigrants from Europe.

The Ottoman Empire formally enters WWI, 1914

1915

Jan 1 Jews of Laibach Austria expelled

Jan 4 1st elected Jewish governor, Moses Alexander, takes office in Idaho

Mar 2 Vladmir Jabotinsky forms a Jewish military force to fight in Palestine

Aug 17 Mob lynches Jewish businessman Leo Frank in Cobb County, Georgia, after death sentence for murder of 13-year-old girl commuted to life

Henry McMahon, Britain’s High Commissioner in Egypt, begins exchanging letters with Emir Hussein bin Ali,the Sharif of Mecca, encouraging him to revolt against Ottoman Turkey. McMahon promises Hussein London will recognise an independent Arab state which includes the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, El-Sham (Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) if the Arabs help the Allies in the war against Turkey.

Home Secretary Herbert Samuel, the first British government figure to espouse Zionism, puts forward a proposal for a British protectorate over Palestine to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish state there.

1916

19 May: Mark Sykes and Francois Georges Picot, representing the British and French foreign ministries, secretly reach an agreement dividing Arab lands under Ottoman rule into French and British spheres of influence.

They decide Iraq will go to Britain and France will take Syria and Lebanon. It is decided that Palestine will be placed under international administration since other Christian powers, most notably Russia, maintain an interest in the area.

10 June: Sharif Hussein officially proclaims his revolt against the Ottomans with the help of his two sons Ali and Faisal. By October they have Hijaz under their control, with eventual help from British forced who are keen to keep 12,000 Ottoman troops tied down in Medina ahead of the British invasion of Palestine.

Sharif Hussein of Mecca

1917

Mar 28 Jews are expelled from Tel Aviv & Jaffa by Turkish authorities

May 20 Turkish government authorizes Jews to return to Tel Aviv & Jaffa

Nov 2 Balfour Declaration proclaims support for a Jewish state in Palestine

2 November:The British government issues the Balfour Declaration announcing: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.”

The document neglects to mention Palestine’s indigenous Arab inhabitants by name. It refers to them instead as “non-Jewish communities”.

The declaration is addressed to Lord Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community,for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The text of the declaration is published in the press on 9 November 1917.

Nov 18 Sigma Alpha Rho, a Jewish high school fraternity, is founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

23 November: Revolution erupts in Russia and the Bolsheviks take power. They discover the Sykes-Picot agreement and make it public by publishing it in the press 556 days after it was signed.

9 December: Jerusalem falls to British troops under general Edmund Allenby’s command who proclaims: “the wars of the crusades are now complete"

Allenby enters Jerusalem after it fell to British troops, 1917 proclaiming "“the wars of the crusades are now complete."

1918

Jan 12 Finland's "Mosaic Confessors" law went into effect, making Finnish Jews full citizens.

Mar 9 Ukrainian mobs massacre Jews of Seredino Buda

Mar 13 American Red Magen David (Jewish Red Cross) forms

Aug 4 Adolf Hitler receives the Iron Cross first class for bravery on the recommendation of his Jewish superior, Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann

Balfour and other British officials give Sharif Hassan vague replies when he expresses concernover the Balfour declaration. They claim the Sykes-Picot has not been signed and reassure Sharif of their previous promisesto recognise an independent Arab state.

September:  Britain occupies east Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.It persuades France to abandon the idea of internationalising Palestine as stipulated in Sykes-Picot. France agrees in exchangefor Britain ending its support for the Arab government established in Damascus under the leadership of El-Sharif Hussein’s son, Emir Faisal,thus enabling France to occupy Syria.

October: Exhausted Ottoman Turkey agrees to an armistice.

Nov 21 Polish soldiers organize a pogrom against Jews of Galicia, Poland

Nov 22 Polish forces attack Jewish community of Lemberg (Lvov)

Dec 15 American Jewish Congress holds its 1st meeting

1919

Jan 3 The Faisal-Weizmann Agreement, which was a short-lived agreement for the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, is signed by the King of Iraq and the President of the World Zionist Organization

Apr 5 Polish Army executes 35 young Jews

Aug 10 Ukrainian National Army massacres 25 Jews in Podolia Ukraine

Aug 31 Petlyura's Ukrainian Army kills 35 members of a Jewish defense group

After WW1 ends with the Allies victory the Paris Peace Conference is held to set peace terms. The French and Americans come out in support of the Balfour declaration.

US President Woodrow Wilson appoints the King-Crane commission to report on the situation in former Ottoman territory. The commission submits its findings in August. It concludes that the region, while not ready for independence, opposes the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine because it conflicts with the Balfour Declaration’spromises to respect of the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine.

The commission reports that "Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, by various forms of purchase”. Nearly 90 per cent of the Palestinian population is “emphatically against the entire Zionist program”.

The argumentmade by Zionist representatives that they have a "right" to Palestine based on an occupation of 2,000 years ago “can hardly be seriously considered” says the report.

The report is not made public until 1922.

The King-Crane commission 1919

1920

Apr 4 Arabs attack Jews in Jerusalem

The Allies meet in San Remo and decide that Iraq and Palestine will be placed under British mandate, Syria and Lebanon under French.

1921

May 11 Tel Aviv is 1st all Jewish municipality

Jun 19 Turks & Christians of Palestine sign a friendship treaty against Jews

The terrorist militia Haganah is formed to defend Zionist settlement in Palestine.

1922

Jun 24 Adolf Hitler begins a month long prison sentence for paramilitary operations; he rails against the 'Jewish sell-out' of Germany to the Bolsheviks

Sep 21 US President Warren G. Harding signs a joint resolution of approval to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine

After WWI, Jews make upjust three per cent of the population of Palestine.

The Jewish Agency is founded in Jerusalem and encouraged by the British mandate authorities to seize Palestinian land, take part in administering Palestine, build settlements and smuggle Jewish immigrants who beginmilitary training.

1923

The British mandate over Palestine is recognised by the League of Nations.

1924

Jan 26 Charles Jewtraw, US 500m skater, takes 1st Winter Olympics gold medal

March 5: Sharif Hussein of Mecca declares himself King of the Hijaz and the Arab lands, which is rejected by the powerful rival Arab clan of Saud who oust him from power in October.

1929

Aug 14 Jewish Agency for Palestine forms

Aug 23 Arabs attack Jews in Israel

Aug 24 Palestinians attack orthodox Jews in Jerusalem

The Jewish Agency is officially founded. Its mission is to "inspire Jews throughout the world to connect with their people, heritage, and land, and empower them to build a thriving Jewish future and a strong Israel”.

Palestinians begin resisting Zionist efforts to grab Islamic sites in Jerusalem. The Al-Buraq Revolution is triggered after Zionist gangs raise flags on the Al-Buraq Wall - the southern section of the western wall of Al-Haram Al-Sharif mosque in the old city of Jerusalem- declaring it theirs. 

Palestinians across the country rise up against the British occupation and plans to colonise Palestine as a Jewish state. The British round up hundreds of Palestinians and sentence 29 to death. This is later reduced. Three are executed, the remainder are sentenced to life in prison.

The Buraq revolution, 1929

Fouad Hijazi, Atta El-Zeer, Mohamed Jamjoum executed by British occupation for their role in the 1929 Buraq revolution

1931-1935

Jewish immigration to Palestine jumps from 4,075 to 61,854.

The more radical elements in the Haganah split from the militia and form Irgun.

1933

Apr 1 Nazi Germany begins persecution of Jews by boycotting Jewish businesses

Apr 7 1st 2 NAZI anti-Jewish laws, bars Jews from legal & public service

Apr 26 Jewish students are barred from school in Germany

Jul 20 Germany: Two-hundred Jewish merchants are arrested in Nuremberg and paraded through the streets.

The Nazi party led by Adolf Hitler seizes power in Germany and begins persecuting Jews, leading to a surge in Jewish immigration to Palestine.

1934

Feb 10 1st Jewish immigrant ship to break the English blockade in Palestine

May 7 Part of Khabarovsk becomes a Jewish Autnomous Region

1935

Aug 11 Nazi mass demonstration against German Jews

Sep 15 Nuremberg Laws deprives German Jews of citizenship & makes swastika official symbol of Nazi Germany

Nov 14 Nazis deprive German Jews of their citizenship

1936

Apr 19 Anti-Jewish riots break out in Palestine

Apr 20 Jews repel an Arab attack in Petach Tikvah Palestine

The Arab Revolt: Palestinians rise against British colonial rule and mass Jewish immigration. They demand the nullification of the Balfour declaration and autonomy. The revolt lasts for three years before it is crushed by British forces and Zionist militias.

The World Zionist Conference

1939

Jan 4 Hermann Goering appoints Reinhard Heydrich head of Jewish Emigration

Jan 30 Hitler threatens the Jews during his speech to the German Reichstag (Parliament)

Mar 20 7,000 Jews flee German occupied Memel Lithuania

Apr 10 Colijn's Dutch government opens camp Westerbork for German Jews

May 13 SS St Louis departs Hamburg with 937 Jews fugitives

Jul 6 German Nazis close last Jewish enterprises

Aug 29 Chaim Weizmann informs England that Palestine Jews will fight in WW II

Sep 19 Wehrmacht (German regular army) murders 100 Jews in Lukov Poland

Sep 21 Reinhard Heydrich meets in Berlin to discuss final solution of Jews

Oct 6 Hitler announces plans to regulate Jewish problem

Oct 24 Nazi require wearing of Star of David by Jews

Oct 26 Polish Jews forced into obligatory work service

Oct 30 USSR & Germany agree on partitioning Poland, Hitler deports Jews

Nov 12 Jews in Lodz Poland ordered to wear yellow star of David

Nov 15 Nazis begin mass murder of Warsaw Jews

Nov 23 Nazi Gov of Poland Hans Frank requires Jews to wear a blue star

Dec 1 SS-Fuhrer Himmler begins deportation of Polish Jews

Dec 11 New anti-Jewish measures proclaimed in Poland

The British government issues white papers restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine and vowing to end its mandate in 10 years. Zionist settlers declare war on Britain.

The United States allies with the World Zionist Organisation.

The Arab Revolt 1936

1940

Jan 25 Nazi decrees establishment of Jewish ghetto in Lodz Poland

Jan 26 Nazis forbid Polish Jews to travel on trains

May 1 140 Palestinian Jews die as German planes bomb their ship

May 21 AVRO-chairman Willem Vogt fires all Jewish employees

Jun 1 Nazi occupiers kick Jews out of Dutch air guard

Jun 5 Governor of Suriname & Netherlands Antilles refuse entry to Jewish refugees

Jun 22 SS rounds up 31 German/Polish/Dutch Jews in Roermond, Netherlands

Jul 1 Australia refuses entry to Dutch Jewish refugees

Aug 15 1st edition of Jewish Weekly newspaper in Amsterdam (under Nazis)

Sep 17 Nazis deprive Jews of possessions

Sep 19 Nazi decree forbids gentile woman to work in Jewish homes

Oct 3 France Vichy government proclaims end to Jewish status

Oct 4 French Vichy regime proclaims end of "Statute of the Jews"

Oct 24 Protestant churches protest against dismissal of Jew civil servants

Oct 31 Deadline for Warsaw Jews to move into the Warsaw Ghetto

Nov 26 Nazi Germany began walling off the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw

Dec 9 Illegal Jewish immigrants to Haifa are deported to Mauritius

The Jewish National Fund begins to compile a registry of Arab villages in Palestine. Known as the village files, the registry of 1,200 population centres becomes useful a few years later when Zionist militias begin their ethnic cleansing, occupyingvillages and expelling their inhabitants on the eve of the creation of Israel in 1948.

1944

Feb 28 Arrests of the ten-Boom family in Nazi occupied Netherlands (Haarlem) through a Dutch collaborator on charges of hiding Jews

Mar 27 1,000 Jews leave Drancy, France, for Auschwitz concentration camp

Mar 27 2,000 Jews are murdered in Kaunas Lithuania

Mar 27 40 Jewish policemen in Riga, Latvia, ghetto are shot by the Gestapo

Mar 27 Children's Aktion-Nazis collect all the Jewish children of Lovno

Mar 31 Hungary orders all Jews to wear yellow stars

Apr 6 Jewish nursery at Izieu-Ain, France, overrun by Nazis

Apr 13 Transport #71 departs with French Jews to nazi-Germany

Apr 14 1st Jews transported from Athens arrive at Auschwitz

May 15 14,000 Jews of Munkacs, Hungary, deported to Auschwitz

May 16 1st of 180,000+ Hungarian Jews reach Auschwitz

May 30 Transport number 75 departs with French Jews to Nazi Germany

Jun 20 Nazis begin mass extermination of Jews at Auschwitz

Jun 29 Nazi Paul Touvier shoots 7 Jews dead

Jul 20 Death March of 1,200 Jews from Lipcani Moldavia begins

Jul 31 Transport #77 departs with French Jews to nazi-Germany

Jewish Victim & Diarist of the Holocaust Anne Frank

Aug 2 Jewish survivors of Kovono Ghetto emerge from their bunker

Aug 6 All 1,200 Jewish death marchers from Lipcani Moldavia have died

Aug 6 Deportation of 70,000 Jews from Lodz Poland to Auschwitz begins

Aug 21 Raid on Jewish childrens house in Secrétan/St-Mandé

Aug 22 Last transport of French Jews to nazi-Germany

Sep 3 68th & last transport of Dutch Jews (including Anne Frank) from Westerbork leaves for Auschwitz concentration camp

Sep 4 2,087 Jews transported for Westerbork to KZ-Lower Theresienstadt

Oct 7 Uprising at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, Jews burn down crematoriums

Nov 8 25,000 Hungarian Jews are loaned to Nazis for forced labor

9 November: The terrorist Zionist group, Stern Gang, assassinates Lord Moyne British Secretary of State for the Colonies near his home in Cairo.

Dec 3 Hungarian death march of Jews ends

1946

Jun 29 Black Sabbath-Brits arrest 2,700 Jews in Palestine as alleged terrorist

Jul 4 Anti Jewish riots in Kielce Poland, 42 die

Jul 14 Mass murder of Jews in Kielce, Poland

Oct 6 US President Harry Truman questions Great Britain Jews about Palestine

The Zionist group Stern Gang assassinates the British Minister of State in the Middle East, Lord Moyne, and tries on several occasions to assassinate the British High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Harold MacMichael.

Jewish terrorist militiasHaganah, Palmach, Irgun and Lehi,growing since 1945 in Palestine,are directed by the Jewish Agency to weaken or destroy the British mandate.

Yitzak Shamir centre, a leader in the terrorist Zionist Stern Gang is wanted for his role in assassinating Lord Moyne the British Secretary of State for the Colonies 1944. Shamir would later become Israel’s prime minister.

1946

Zionist terrorist groups Stern Gang and Irgun attack British forces and bomb the Kind David Hotel, the British military headquarters in Palestine, killing 91 people of different nationalities.

October: the Irgun bomb the British Embassy in Rome and conducts several sabotage operations against British military transportation routes in occupied Germany.

Menachem Begin, Irgun’s leader, would later become Israel’s  seventhprime minister.

Illegal immigration sees the number of Jews increase to 608,225 (32.96 per cent of the population).Palestinian Muslims and Christians number1,237,334.

Terrorist Jewish groups mine and sabotage the Cairo-Haifa express, 1948

1947

Feb 23 US General Eisenhower opens drive to raise $170M in aid for European Jews

Apr 1 1st Jewish immigrants to Israel disembark at Port of Eilat

Jul 18 British seize "Exodus 1947" ship of Jewish immigrants to Palestine

Nov 29 UN Gen Assembly partitions Palestine between Arabs & Jews

Nov 30 Day after UN decree for Israel, Jewish settlements attacked

Dec 29 Ship carrying Jewish immigrants driven away from Palestine

Bowing to American pressure the League of Nations General Assembly issues a resolution dividing Palestine between Arabs and Jews. It is rejected by the Arabs.

David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency’s executive committee,secretly begins mobilising terrorist Zionist militias inside and outside Palestine. Plan Dalet, employing massacres, ethnic cleansing and terror to conquer Palestine, is implemented.

Jewish immigration to Palestine, 1947

December: Zionist militias massacre Palestinian villagers in Haifa, Al-Tira, Balad el-Sheikh, Yehiday, Khisas and Qazaza.

1948

4 January: Jews in British Army uniforms enter Jaffa and blow up the Serai (the old Turkish Government House), killing more than 40 and wounding 98.

5 January:Haganah terrorists bomb the SemiramisHotel in the Katamon killing 24 Muslims, Christians, foreigners, women and children.

March: Zionist terrorists sabotage and mine the Cairo-Haifa express for the second time in a month, killing 40 pand wounding 60.

Mar 11 Jewish Agency of Jerusalem bombed

The 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel by Zionist terrorist groups

9 April: Zionist gangs implementing Plan Daletsurround the Palestinian village of DeirYassin from three sides and kill at least 254 Palestinians. They leave a corridor open to allow a number of villagers to escape and recount the horror.

Massacres in Palestinian villages and towns continue for months. They include Al-Lajjun, Qaluniya, Ayn el-Zaytoun, Abu Shusha, Al-Tantura ,BeitDaras, Lydda, Al-Dawayima , Saliha and Hula.

Estimates put the death toll at 15,000.Thousands of Palestinians are rounded up in labour camps.

Apr 10 Jewish Hagana repels an Arab attack on Mishmar HaEmek

Apr 15 1st Jewish-Arab military battle, arabs defeated

14 May: Britain declares the end of its mandate over Palestine after completing its mission by issuing the Balfour declaration. Despite decades of incessant efforts to acquire land, by the end of the mandate Jews control just 5.8% of the land in Palestine.

AL-NAKBA: The Catastrophe 15 May: Ben Gurion announces the creation of Israel. Throughout 1948 and 1949 the Palestinian population of over 600 townsand villages are forced from their homes. There are 35 reported massacres.

May 27 Arabs blow up Jewish synagogue Hurvat Rabbi Yehudah he-Hasid

Jun 20 20 Jews killed when a bomb is thrown into Jewish quarter of Cairo

Oct 16 Demonstration by Moscow Jews honoring Israeli ambassador Golda Meir

Nov 16 Operation Magic Carpet - 1st plane from Yemen carrying Jews to Israel

The forced depopulation of Palestinians is underway.

800,000 Palestinians are ethnically cleansed between 1947 and 1949.

The Atlas of Palestine documents 232 incidents of atrocities, including massacres, destruction of homes, plunder and looting by Zionist forces,between 1947 and 1956.

50 years of Arab dispossession since the creation of Israel

 

The Palestinian exodus, 1948

Continuing Exodus: 1968

They have just arrived in east Jordan, crossing the temporary bridge, near to the newly destroyed Allenby Bridge, from the Israeli-Occupied West Bank.

Despite military action in the Jordan valley, there was a continuing exodus of Palestinians, from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, that numbered between two and four thousand a month from the autumn of 1967 until the early summer of 1968.

The distances on the signboard, partially obscured, read "JERICHO 8 Km JERSLM 43 Km"

Rations in the Desert

In the early 1950s, UNRWA used to deliver rations to Palestine refugees in remote areas of Jordan. Every three months, UNRWA convoys would drive out into the desert as here near Shobak. Refugees would come five miles from their homes to meet the convoy at an appointed bend on the road heading to Aqaba.

From 1948 until 1967, the Gaza Strip was administered by Egypt. The residence there were linked with the outside world by one narrow road through the 200 miles of Sinai desert to Cairo. Another exit was the Mediterranean Sea. Both links were cut off by the 1967 war.

This photo shows Palestinians leaving the Gaza Strip on small fishing boats.

FOR PALESTINE REFUGEES

Since the first days of the exodus of Arab refugees, people found shelter in the different convents around Bethlehem. 

In the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Convent, hard on the walls of the Church of the Nativity itself at one time 200 persons took refuge. Today still 15 families remain. 

Here in the Convent refectory is the home of Armin Seferian (43), standing between his wife and children, is a refugee for the second time in his life, having narrowly escaped a massacre by the Turks when he was twelve years old. After many wanderings, he managed to set up his own tailoring business in Jerusalem. 

Today he is a refugee again; for his shop lies in the side of Jerusalem today in Israel. Now he finds occasional work for which he earns very little. 

For eight years his family has been living in the Convent. Only at Christmas time, when the refectory is used each year as a dining room, must they carry out all their belongings into a vault below. On all festive occasions Armin's wife becomes the Convent cook, for which she is paid $ 10 a month.

Israeli Raids Bring Destruction to Refugee Camps in South Lebanon

Nabatiah, Ein el-Hilweh, Burj el-Shemali and Rashidieh are Palestine refugee camps in south Lebanon for refugees who left their homes as a result of the first Arab-Israeli hostilities in 1948. In May and June of 1974, many of the 50,000 inhabitants of these four camps fled in terror as their shelters were turned to rubble during a series of Israeli air and sea attacks on south Lebanon in which 43 registered refugees were killed and 101 were injured. 

An estimated 1,500 shelters and refugee-built extensions were completely destroyed, as well as several UNRWA installations including a school. In Nabatieh alone, 80% of the concrete block shelters erected by UNRWA in which more than 3,000 refugees had been living, were hit. This refugee, a resident of Burj al-Shemali, lost his one-room shelter. 

UNRWA immediately issued blankets and dry rations to the homeless refugees who took shelter in nearby mosques and schools. The Agency also provided an emergency feedin programme and a mobile medical unit for the people of the area. Reconstruction and repair of damage to refugee shelters in Rashidieh, Ein el-Hilweh and Burj el-Shemali has been carried out on a self-help basis with the Agency providing building materials. But fearful of continuing raids on their camps, none of the residents of Nabatieh and less than half of those of Rashidieh have returned to their "homes".

Dheisheh camp (pop. 8,600), West Bank, is one of 59 camps established in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war to accommodate the thousands of Palestinians in their exodus from Palestine. 

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was established in May 1950 to care for these refugees until such time as a permanent solution could be found. However, almost half a century later UNRWA is still providing the Palestine refugees, now numbering 3.2 million, with education, health, and relief and social services.

Aqabat Jabr refugee camp: Jericho, West Bank

Every morning and evening these women go to fetch water from Elisha's fountain for their families who live in the Palestine refugee camp at Aqabat Jabr, which lies in the shadow of the near Jericho. Displaced from their homes in Palestine in 1948, a large number of refugees stayed here in the Jordan valley because there are many springs to provide them with that precious commodity - water. Elisha's fountain provides water for this camp, as it did for the ancient city of Jericho more than 6,000 years ago. 

As a result to the 1968 Arab-Israeli war only 2,273 persons put of 52,000 remain in the three camps in Jericho area, most of them concentrated in Aqabat Jabr. The others once again fled, across the Jordan river into east Jordan.

A Street in Qalqilya

According to UNRWA's Annual Report, "In Qalqilya (near Nablus) and five other small frontier villages in the Latrun and Hebron areas, many houses were damaged or destroyed during the fighting or were subsequently demolished. The extent of the destruction varies from rather less than half the houses in Qalqilya to virtually total destruction in some of the smaller villages".



In the early years of UNRWA, the greater part of the Agency's resources was devoted to relief services. Now it is devoted to education. The Agency and the refugees themselves regard the education as the best means to improve their conditions. 

Today there are 330,000 Palestine refugee children at UNRWA school system which now is threatened with closure because of lack of money.

Arab Refugees Return to West Bank of the Jordan: August 1967

In July 1967, Israel announced plans for the return of displaced Arabs to the West Bank. Half to three quarters of the 200,000 Arabs who fled to east Jordan following hostilities in June 1967 applied to return. By 1972, 40,000 Arabs were allowed back to the West Bank; but, only 3,000 of this number were UNRWA-registered refugees.