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Abstract
This thesis examines the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Jordan Valley through Palestinian oral histories, centering the lived experiences of those who endured this period and its long-lasting aftermath. By writing a social history from below, it traces Palestinian life in the Jordan Valley before the occupation, the dynamics of displacement during the War of 1967, and their consequences across both banks of the Jordan River. Methodologically, the thesis engages Palestinians’ oral histories to recover and foreground their marginalized narratives, supplemented by extensive archival research and visual materials to construct a comprehensive account of this period and geography. The analysis demonstrates how the occupation radically transformed the Jordan Valley from a space of vibrant social life, productive agriculture, and vital mobility into a militarized frontier marked by depopulation, dispossession, and territorial fragmentation. It documents Israel’s systematic strategies of expulsion, denial of return, and spatial erasure, while also illuminating Palestinian responses through clandestine return, reviving agrarian life in exile, and steadfastness against settler colonial encroachment. Centering local voices and microhistories, this thesis reframes the Jordan Valley as a critical site in Palestine’s modern history, offering new insights into the everyday life of the Palestinians. In doing so, it contributes to broader debates on the social histories of displaced communities, Zionist settler colonialism, and the geographies of violence and resistance in post-1967 Palestine.