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Press of Atlantic City · Atlantic City, New Jersey · 20 October 1949

CP-1949-019

Israel Arabs Say They Are Being Banned

Arab Exodus Constant

By Fred J. Zusy, The Associated Press, Jerusalem

Israel Arabs Say They Are Being Banned — Press of Atlantic City, 20 October 1949
Press of Atlantic City · Atlantic City, New Jersey · 20 October 1949

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Transcribed from the clipping

“Jerusalem, Oct. 20—(AP)—Arab sources say the Arab population of Israel is now less than 100,000 and claim that the Jews are forcing small numbers of Arabs to leave the country almost every day.

Hundreds of thousands of Arabs who fled Israel after the start of Palestine hostilities now live in refugee camps in the Arab border area surrounding the Jewish state or are crowded into nearby Arab villages and towns. Ahmad N.

Sabi, external liaison officer for the Hashemite Jordan government in Arab Palestine, estimates the Arab population of what is now Israel at 785,000 before the fighting started. ‘The most tragic and ironic part of the picture,’ he said, ‘is that for every Jewish refugee or emigree brought into Israel, an Arab refugee was created—forced out of his homeland.’

Sabi told a reporter that Israel is pushing small numbers of Arabs out of the country almost daily—chiefly on the ground that they have illegally infiltrated across the border… He said an official protest had been made to the United Nations Security Council over an incident at Qalqilya last June in which four Arabs were killed.

As Sabi told the story, this is what happened: Three cousins operating an orange grove and a young neighbor were ordered into a jeep by unknown Israelis, taken to the border, ordered to ‘get out’ and machine gunned as they crossed the line.

Then, Sabi said, other Arabs running orange groves in the vicinity, were told that ‘irresponsible’ persons had killed these four and warned that the Israel government could not guarantee protection to those remaining. As a result, Sabi said, about 100 other Arabs fled.”

Context added by this archive

Calls them Israel Arabs rather than Palestinians, and their leaving an exodus.

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"Israel Arabs Say They Are Being Banned," Press of Atlantic City, 20 October 1949, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1949-019. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1949-019

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Last updated 2 November 2026

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.

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-1949-019.

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