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The Abilene Reporter-News · 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

Arab Refugees Leaving Palestine in Despair — The Abilene Reporter-News, 3 May 1948
The Abilene Reporter-News · 3 May 1948

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 item

"Arab Refugees Leaving Palestine in Despair," The Abilene Reporter-News, 3 May 1948. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1948-101. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1948-101

Elsewhere in the archive

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1948-101.

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