Arab Refugees, Fearing Attacks, Flee from Jerusalem and Jaffa

They Expect Collapse of Arab Resistance; Haifa Is Described as Almost a Ghost Town

By DANIAL DE LUCE

Arab Refugees, Fearing Attacks, Flee from Jerusalem and Jaffa — Burlington Free Press, 3 May 1948 — Burlington Free Press · 3 May 1948

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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 en route 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.

“Too Little Too Late” This was the muttered comment of a formerly wealthy merchant from Maillah Road in Jerusalem: “Talk of Arab governments rescuing Palestine sounds like another case of ‘too little 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 in in this country and inexhaustible riches to draw on from overseas.” Like Poles who denounced Marshall Edward Smigly-Rydz when Poland collapsed in 1939, these Arabs today are quick to attack those they once glorified.

They talk slightingly of the exiled Jerusalem Mufti Haj Amin El Husseini. They say Fawzi Bey Al Jaukji, former chief of the volunteers in Northern Palestine, violated explicit instructions of the Arab League to avoid a pitched battle with Haganah, and instead destroyed the prestige of Arab arms by falling into a Jewish trap at Mishmar Haemek last month.

Army Is Hodgepodge The once vaunted 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.

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan at 2.1x to 3.7x, column by column. The clipping carries no masthead, no folio and no page number, so the newspaper rests on the hand-typed slide label alone; this is Associated Press copy that ran in many papers on the same day and nothing in the text points to Vermont. The date is supported but not printed: the story is datelined “JERICHO, Palestine, May 2—(AP)—”, and a dispatch filed on 2 May prints on 3 May. The byline is set “By DANIAL DE LUCE” and has been left as the page sets it; the Associated Press correspondent was Daniel De Luce. Inside the merchant’s quotation the paper sets the word “in” twice — “45,000 trained soldiers in in this country” — and that too is kept. “Maillah Road” is what the page prints; it is probably the Mamilla Road in Jerusalem, but the identification is not asserted here. “Too Little Too Late” and “Army Is Hodgepodge” are crossheads set in the body of the column and appear in the excerpt where the page sets them.

Cite this clipping

"Arab Refugees, Fearing Attacks, Flee from Jerusalem and Jaffa," Burlington Free Press, 3 May 1948. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1948-158. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1948-158