In the Shadow of the Six-Day War

Forty years later, defeats and disappointments continue to shape the lives of Palestinians and Israelis

Alexandra Boulat / VII for TIME

The butcher Omaar al-Nakhla at home with his wife and five of his six children, after friday lunch. Omar is a Palestinian refugee from the six day war living in Jalazone refugee camp, north of Ramallah, West Bank.

On June 5, 1967, war broke out between Israel and three Arab states--Egypt, Jordan and Syria--after months of threats directed at the Jewish state. At a Palestinian refugee camp named Jalazon, chiseled out of a stony hillside not far from Jerusalem in the West Bank, then under Jordanian rule, Nazmeia was expecting a child. Her brother Abu Fady, then 9, remembers his family listening to an Egyptian radio announcer describe how Arab troops were advancing on Tel Aviv. Within hours, the radio said, the Jews would be keeping company with fishes in the sea. "We were flying with happiness," recalls Abu...

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