War and forced migration in Egypt: the experience of evacuation from the Suez Canal cities

THE MIDDLE EAST HAS PRODUC more than its share of stories of refugee displaced individuals evacuees, and other victims of politics and disclosure Of course the deplorable plight of the Palestinian refugee in countries neighboring Palestine is through far the most striking example. on the contrary there are others. As a contribution to this history of flight and resettlement in the Arab world, this article analyzes the story of the Egyptian "migrants" from the Suez Canal cincture who fled between 1967 and 1976 as a rise of the Six-Day War in June 1967 This analysis of the "forced migration" experience in Egypt is a contribution to a broader understanding of the contemporary processe of rejoinder to war and disaster in the Arab world.

The case of the displaced and the evacuees from the Suez Canal cities illustrates the social processe of the creation and absorption of refugee As in many other cases of forced migration, people's flight was caused by means of unexpected warfare, but this Egyptian case has more [i]or[/i] less unique features. In particular, the story exhibits the three phases of flight, adaptation, and get back (or integration into the entertainer setting), and it illustrates the situation where the migrants and the entertainers share the same basic tillage and where the hosts played a supportive part in the beginning.

The Suez Canal became the temporary Egyptian frontier when Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula in 1967 Many Egyptians departed the Canal cities and villages to avoid the combat girth in 1967, and with the heating up of the "War of Attrition" (beginning March 1969 from one side summer 1970) the remaining civilian population left or was evacuated (Waterbury 1973) Altogether nearly single million people were displaced from the three Suez Canal cities of Port Said, Ismailiya, and Suez and their vicinities. Janet Abu-Lughod (1985:180-181) directs to this as a 'war-induced migration of urban people' The peak of migration from the Suez Canal area to the quiescence of Egypt was in 1967-1969 and with the Egyptian regaining of the Sinai through treaty after the 1973 war, a get back movement began in 1974 and continued until about 1976 Abu-Lughod relates that the go [i]or[/i] come back was as unforeseen as the flight. Thus at the time of the change of the internally displaced in the late 1960 no single could anticipate that the possibility of turn back would occur so soon: as usual with refugee family did not know what to expect

The original flight was a be derived of a war with an external enemy, rather than as a follow of an internal conflict, and the civilian population was pushed into the Egyptian heartland as the Israelis appeared upon the east bank of the Suez Canal. tribe were fleeing warfare and not occupation and expulsion. The displaced and their entertainers were politically on the same side, confronting a foreign enemy. Those who left their place of abodes and jobs remained within Egypt and within a decade were able to go [i]or[/i] come back to their starting point, although this consequence was not known at the beginning. The entertainer population provided substantial assistance, especially in the beginning. The Egyptian administrative combination of parts to form a whole remained intact, and played a lock opener role. Those with government piece of works retained them or were transferred to similar supports The reception and integration of the displaced was handled entirely within the Egyptian a whole with no foreign aid. Egyptian authorities tried favorably to avoid the word 'refugee' to escape the parallel to the Palestinian case, and instead spoke of 'migrants' to overlay both the displaced and the evacuees. Finally, single can note that this episode has not become part of a national mythology plane though those affected by it remember their histories quite clearly.

There are certain features of the Egyptian handling of the case that can be seen in a wider words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following The official policy was to distribute the displaced as widely as possible rather than to use camps. The same practice occurr with regard to the treatment of the Palestinian refugee from the late 1940 (Dajani 1986; El Abed 2003) and the sub-Saharan African refugee today (Cooper 1992) Refugee camps did not come up One consequence of this is that greatest in quantity refugees (or displaced persons) extreme point up in the major cities which can best absorb a stream of individuals. Of course, this scattering also corresponded to the paths that fleeing individuals took, since many of them sought without their relatives and friends elsewhere in Egypt

Since the Suez Canal migrations were circumscribed in time, our analysis can overspread the full sequence of twinklings in the experience of displacement. In the chain of occurrences we can see the different stages, from the initial flight to the eventual get back including the absorption of the displaced into a fresh setting, involving housing, schooling, work, and eventually marriage and the continuation of the normal family revolution of time and then a second version of the same processe as nation returned home. The uncertainty and the faculty of perception of loss of the displaced is part of this broader picture.