Summary
Israeli park planted by the Jewish National Fund and funded by Canadian donors over the depopulated villages of Emwas, Yalo and Beit Nuba in the Latrun salient — in fact occupied West Bank land outside the Green Line, razed after their occupation in 1967 (Invited to Witness — Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine, PDF p.174-176).
Details
- Leading an Eyewitness Palestine delegation there, Umar al-Ghubari introduced himself as a historian, not a tour guide: “This is the West Bank”, “We are outside the Green Line”; the three villages were occupied in 1967 “because it couldn’t occupy them in 1948” (PDF p.174).
- “This area was full of houses only fifty years ago”; six people were killed in their homes, ten to twenty Egyptian and Jordanian soldiers left after ten minutes of clashes, and “Bulldozers razed the village over the following weeks” (PDF p.174).
- Tourists study the carefully constructed village model in Ramallah and the refugees’ postcards — bulldozers razing houses, village ruins, before-and-after shots of the 1967 demolition — alongside the unequivocal demand for return (PDF p.175-176).
Related pages
Invited to Witness — Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine, Emwas, Zochrot, Jewish National Fund, Zionist afforestation