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Focusing on the Latroun villages, it highlights the plight of all Palestinians - denied their rights by forced displacements, prevented from returning, and in the Occupied Territories still living under an oppressive 42-year military occupation. Al Haq's purpose was to document an international crime, disclose the policy behind it, provide victims the evidence they need to seek justice, and the world community ample reason to demand it. After 42 repressive years, Israel's occupation "has acquired some of the (worst) characteristics of colonialism and apartheid" with no redress in sight to end it.
Following the Six-Day War, Israel expropriated 400 square km from displaced persons and refugees, and threatened Palestinians along the Green Line with more, especially in the three Latroun villages, targeted for annexation prior to the occupation by establishing irreversible "facts on the ground" when completed.
Al-Haq's study uncovered official Israeli political and military documents and compiled firsthand accounts from interviews with former soldiers who participated in the operation and were willing to discuss it freely. Thankfully so because their truths must be told.
The Story of the Latroun Villages: Their Destruction and Displacement
In Israel's 1948 "War of Independence," the Old City of Jerusalem (in East Jerusalem) and Latroun salient were key targets fought hard for, lost, and thereafter "engrained in the collective psyche of the Israeli military." As a result, Latroun remained a West Bank enclave along the Green Line, separated from Israel by a "No Man's Land" buffer zone.
The Six-Day War achieved the earlier loss, erased a "bitter memory" according to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, and provided an opportunity for more land and its valuable resources by expelling Palestinian residents and denying their right to return.
From the start, no resistance was met because the Jordanian military withdrew the night before, knowing it would be outnumbered so prioritized its defense of Jerusalem. As a result, Palestinian residents began fleeing as soon as Israeli tanks approached, and those remaining were forcibly expelled, in many cases with no time to take essentials, including food and water for a 20 km walk to Ramallah (in intense heat), their only way to get there not knowing their fate, yet believing at the time they'd be allowed to return.
Unknown to them then:
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