ARAB REFUGEES FLEEING HAIFA

Crowd Same Cargo Jetties British Used to Deport Illegal Jew Migrants

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Transcribed from the clipping

HAIFA, Palestine, April 24.—(AP)—Weary thousands of Arab refugees crowded the docks tonight to flee Jewish-dominated Haifa. Many families spent last night and most of today on makeshift pallets placed on the concrete docks. One mother used an empty wooden packing case as a crude cradle for her child. Most of these refugees are poor.

Their homes and businesses were in Haifa’s market place, which is now under control of Haganah, the Jewish militia. The refugees are on the same cargo jetty which the British use to deport visa-less Jews who arrive in Palestine waters on illegal refugee ships.

British landing craft and small Arab ships are carrying the refugees in small groups to Acre, fortress town across the bay. One returning Arab estimated 6,000 are there already from Haifa, living in schools, mosques and business buildings. They are being fed by the people of Acre.

Conferences were held today between British, Arabs and Jews on plans for evacuating Arabs who wish to leave Haifa in army trucks. One Arab spokesman estimated 30,000 would leave and said it would take eight days to transport them to Nablus, Nazareth and Lebanon.

Food for the Arabs, whose economy was shattered by the impact of the Haganah conquest of the city, also was a critical problem. An Arab spokesman appealed to Jews “who are in possession of the town to permit bakers to come to work and to permit people to go and buy bread. Some of our people have been without food 48 hours.

We are trying to feed them, but Jews keep sniping and shooting.”

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan at 2.9x in four strips; the excerpt is the whole of the story as cut. THE PAGE AND THE LABEL DO NOT AGREE ABOUT THE DATE AND THE LABEL’S DATE HAS BEEN KEPT. There is no masthead, no folio and no page number. The dateline reads “HAIFA, Palestine, April 24.—(AP)—” and the opening sentence says the refugees crowded the docks “tonight”. A dispatch filed on the night of 24 April in Palestine normally reaches an American morning paper on 25 April, and the Arizona Daily Star is a morning paper, so the label’s 24 April is one day early on the ordinary arithmetic of the wire. It is not impossible as printed, since Haifa evening is American early afternoon, but nothing on this clipping settles it. The newspaper itself rests on the label; nothing printed here names a paper or a city. In the final quotation the two words “Jews keep” are set in bold in the middle of roman body type — a compositor’s slug, not emphasis the writer asked for — and the excerpt field carries no formatting, so the bold is recorded here instead.

Cite this clipping

"ARAB REFUGEES FLEEING HAIFA," Arizona Daily Star, 24 April 1948. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1948-159. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1948-159