The Abilene Reporter-News · Abilene, Texas · 3 May 1948

CP-1948-101

Arab Refugees Leaving Palestine in Despair

HAIFA DESCRIBED AS ‘GHOST TOWN’

By Daniel De Luce, Associated Press, Jericho, Palestine

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Transcribed from the clipping

“JERICHO, Palestine, May 2 (AP)—A road of Arab despair winds eastward across the Jordan. Many refugees passing Jericho enroute to Trans-Jordan, a few miles away, are from Jerusalem and Jaffa. They fear Jewish offensives are crashing through weakened Arab volunteer resistance.

Haifa was described as almost a ghost town with its population dwindling to less than 20,000 from a normal figure at least five times that. This was the muttered comment of a formerly wealthy merchant from Mallah Road in Jerusalem: ‘Talk of Arab governments rescuing Palestine sounds like another case of “too little and too late.”

If they send all the 30,000 regulars they’re supposed to have promised to send, the Jews have 45,000 trained soldiers here in this country and inexhaustible riches to draw on from overseas.’

The once daunted Arab liberation army of Yarmuk is described by the refugees as a hodgepodge collection of adventurers, ne’er-do-wells and soap-box orators who never numbered more than 3,000 and who relied on Palestinian Arab villagers for cannon fodder. The reported agreement by five Arab states to wipe out the Zionist state meets with acid skepticism from the refugees.

They claim: King Abdullah seeks to expand Trans-Jordan to include southern Palestine, but will not really endanger his Arab Legion in big battle because he fears King Ibn Saud may take the opportunity to annex rabia and other southern Trans-Jordan territory to Saduia Arabia.

The Iraqi government has failed to solve an economic crisis and is in no position to weaken its army by a Palestine campaign because the Kurds in northern Iraq, a million strong, are close to another rebellion.”

Context added by this archive

Daniel De Luce on the road out, six days before he stood in Jaffa. Haifa down from about a hundred thousand to under twenty thousand, and the refugees quoted at length on what they think of the Arab armies coming to save them. The subheadings are “Muttered Comment,” “Acid Skepticism” and “Egyptian View.”

It runs beside a tornado that killed ten in Kansas.

Cite this clipping

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More from the 1940s

• Jewish Reprisal Raids On Two Arab Villages Take Toll of 8 LivesThe News Journal · 1 January 1948
• Palestine Blasts Rip Arab OfficesThe New York Times · 5 January 1948
• Jews Blow Up Military Post Of Jaffa ArabsMorning Advocate · 5 January 1948
• Ninety Wounded In Truck Blast At HeadquartersThe Beaumont Enterprise · 5 January 1948
• Jews Dynamite HQ of Arabs’ High CommandDaily News · 5 January 1948
• 15 Arabs Die In Jaffa BlastTerre Haute Tribune · 5 January 1948
• All 334 clippings from the 1940s →

In these collections

The same copy, in 1 other paper

• Despairing Arab Refugees Flee in Wake of Successes By Palestine Jewish ForcesRutland Daily HeraldRutland, Vermont3 May 1948CP-1948-066

Most of the shorter text appears in the longer one. Found by comparing transcriptions, not by reading them side by side, so this establishes that the text overlaps and not that these papers ran the same dispatch. How this was done.