2025 Workshop

Atwa Jaber

PhD candidate in International History and Politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute

“Amman-Nuseirat-Jericho”: Forced Displacement, Erasure, and the Forgotten Story of Clandestine Return to the Occupied Jordan Valley, 1967. 

In June 1967, Israel occupied and ethnically cleansed the Jordan Valley, transferring the  vast majority of its Palestinian population towards the east bank of the Jordan River. This  included tens of thousands of Nakba refugees who had settled in the Jordan Valley  following their catastrophe in 1948. In the months that followed the occupation, Israel  systematically denied the return of the displaced Palestinians and demolished several of their communities, making way for establishing the settler-colonial enterprise which  continues to expand until today. This period of the Jordan Valley’s past remains underexamined by historians of Palestine and the Palestinians. 

The proposed paper is focused on a specific aspect of this overlooked history: how  Palestinians defied and resisted forced displacement and denial of return by  establishing a secret smuggling route in the Jordan Valley, through which thousands of  Palestinians returned to the West Bank over a period of six months following the  occupation, i.e., between July and December 1967.  

Central to this history are members of the Palestinian Bedouin clan of ‘Arab al-Nuseirat  who remained in the Jordan Valley during that period. From their communities on the western side of the river, they aided thousands of the displaced Palestinians to secretly  return to the occupied West Bank. They smuggled them during the night across the river,  gave them shelter in their homes, and transported them in disguise to the town of  Jericho—from which they continued their journeys of return to their towns and villages throughout the West Bank. When the Israeli army and intelligence discovered the  scheme, they retaliated with extreme force: they killed smugglers and returnees,  forcibly transferred al-Nuseirat clan southward to Jericho or eastward to Jordan, and erased entirely their communities. 

The proposed paper is part of my doctoral research, and it draws from oral history  interviews with Palestinians. This includes interviews with returnees to the West Bank in  1967 via this smuggling route, as well as elders from ‘Arab al-Nuseirat who witnessed  this history, some in al-Baq’aa refugee camp near Amman and others in the Jordan  Valley near Jericho. 

Conceptually, an examination of these testimonies oVers an alternative reading of the  1967 War and its aftermath from the perspectives of the displaced Palestinians. What  we learn from remembering the history of ‘Arab al-Nuseirat is that in this parcel of the  occupied West Bank, where Israel’s policy of forced displacement was most intense, smuggling became a form of resistance, and Palestinians challenged forced  displacement through clandestine return. Through this short-lived smuggling route,  which was then known as Amman-Nuseirat-Jericho, Palestinians were able to return to  their communities, reunify their families, and counter settler-colonial erasure.

Atwa Jaber is a PhD candidate in international history and politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Jaber's research interests lie at the intersection between history, anthropology, and geography. He holds a BA in law and public administration from Birzeit University and a MA in development studies from the Geneva Graduate Institute. He previously worked and conducted research with the Global Health Center, the Small Arms Survey, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Oxfam, and the United Nations.