samson's foxes and the REFUGEES 2 0 1
the best which could be realistically proposed in the circumstances prevailing until June 1967. The Six-Day War has changed these circumstances completely-both for better and for worse.
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This war created a new refugee problem. While hundreds of thousands of the refugees of 1948 have stayed in their camps in territory captured by the Israeli Army with lightning speed during the six fateful days of June 1967, about 250,000 Palestinians crossed into Transjordan to become refugees there, and a slightly smaller number of Syrians fled from the narrow strip occupied by the Israeli Army on the Syrian plateau.
Again analysis is difficult. As no one in Israel had actually foreseen the entry of Jordan into the war, there did not exist any clear-cut plan about what to do with the inhabitants of the captured territory during the military operations and immediately afterwards. In the absence of such a plan, local commanders acted on their own in different ways; some of them, perhaps influenced by Defense Minister Dayan, seem to have encouraged a new Arab exodus. Many Arabs left voluntarily. Lack of economic opportunity on the West Bank, and even more so in the Gaza Strip, which have been treated shabbily by the Jordanian and Egyptian authorities, has induced an incredible number of young men and women to find employment in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Algeria. These people used to send part of their salaries back to their families, for most the only source of income. When families found themselves within Israeli-occupied territory, they feared, naturally, that their remittances from the Arab countries would be cut off. They hastened to cross into Transjordan while the road was still open. Another refugee contingent seems to be composed of many of the old 1948 group who had lived in camps on the West Bank and were pushed by Israeli commanders over the bridges into Jordan. Some