No Bridge Will Take You Home: The Jordan Valley Exodus Remembered through the UNRWA Archives

In the summer of 1967, Israel occupied the Jordan Valley and transferred most of its Palestinian population eastward toward the opposite bank of the Jordan River, including thousands of Nakba refugees who had resided in camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). At the time, Israel aspired to as much land and as few Palestinians as possible in the Jordan Valley, and so deployed vicious strategies to forcibly displace and deny the return of many Palestinians. In the post-1967 years, Israel demolished tens of Palestinian communities it had depopulated in the Jordan Valley, preparing the ground for its expansionist settlement enterprise in the area. This recent period of the Jordan Valley’s past remains overlooked. In the absence of a comprehensive historiography, the oral history of Palestinians and UNRWA’s archives are key sources for the study of the social history of the displaced population. This article draws from these two sources to examine the circumstances of the Jordan Valley’s occupation and to document, analyze, and preserve fading narratives of the Palestinians.