Jews Claim Victories In North, South and Middle Palestine

Relief of Water Shortage In Jerusalem Promised By Capture of Town

By the Associated Press, Cairo

Jews Claim Victories In North, South and Middle Palestine — Evening Star, 14 July 1948 — Evening Star · Washington, District of Columbia · 14 July 1948

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Transcribed from the clipping

“CAIRO, July 14.—The Jews announced military successes today in North, South and Middle Palestine. They claimed to have captured Shafa ’Amr, 12 miles east of the major port of Haifa.

It was the nearest base of Fawzi Bey al Kaukji, who leads Arab volunteer forces, to Haifa… In the center the capture of Ras el Ein, 9 miles northeast of Tel Aviv, promised to ease the water shortage to the 100,000 besieged Jews in Jerusalem. The town is the terminus of the Jerusalem pipeline.

The Jews also have taken Suba, 5 miles west of Jerusalem, on the Tel Aviv road… A decisive battle appeared to be shaping up around Latrun, which the Trans-Jordan Legion held against increasing Jewish artillery fire. The Jews are pressing an offensive from the coastal plain in an effort to open the road to Jerusalem, now blocked by Arab positions at Latrun.

Capture of Suba, however, opened a by-pass route. Some 10,000 more Arab refugees reached the Judean Hills from Er Ramle and Lydda.

Observers said 250,000 Palestine Arabs have been made homeless since the fighting started… To the south other Jewish forces stamped out the last resistance in Lydda by capturing the police station, where a handful of Arabs had held out after the rest of the town surrendered.

It was in the Lydda area that the Jews were applying pressure from the West against Arab Legion forces blocking the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway at Latrun.”

Context added by this archive

Lydda and Ramle, in Associated Press copy, the day it happened. Ten thousand refugees “reached” the Judean Hills, as though they had walked there of their own accord, and two hundred and fifty thousand “have been made homeless” by no one the sentence names. The town is reported as having surrendered. Neither sentence has an agent in it.

The subheadings are “Commando Attack Made,” “Pumps Not Damaged” and “Extremist Offices Bombed.”

Cite this clipping

"Jews Claim Victories In North, South and Middle Palestine," Evening Star, 14 July 1948, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1948-085. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1948-085