Million Homeless Palestinian Arabs Camped in Middle East

By Cynthia Davis, Women’s National News Service, Beirut, Lebanon

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“Beirut, Lebanon — Nearly a million homeless Palestinian Arab refugees are camped out in the torrid lands of the Middle East today.

In Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt, women and their husbands and children are living in tent cities or mud huts, cellars or stalls of horse barracks — one stall to a family, with a curtain of tattered potato sacks for a doorway… ‘This is my only home,’ said a middle-aged woman in tears as she surveyed her dirty cellar. ‘I am ashamed to live in such filth.

We were never rich, but my husband used to own his own drygoods store, and we were clean.’ Down the road an aged grandmother was sitting cross-legged on the ground. Before her was a tiny bundle of burlap, and suddenly it stirred. ‘This is my granddaughter,’ the white-haired woman said, raising her hurt and bewildered eyes. ‘Her mother is dead.

How am I going to take care of her?’ … in a tent city, only one family in every four or so has a kerosene stove to cook on… With a rationing of one half a cake of soap per person every two weeks, there is not much hope of keeping things clean.… “Communists in the area are making hopeful gestures toward these refugees, displaced when their Palestine homes became part of the new nation of Israel.”… “‘This is my granddaughter,’ the white-haired woman said, raising her hurt and bewildered eyes.

‘Her mother is dead. How am I going to take care of her?’”

How Indeed? “All of the refugees are lacking in proper housing and adequate food and medical care. Their clothing is in rags.”… “In a tent city, only one family in every four or so has a kerosene stove to cook on and what furniture they own is composed of second-hand scraps.

With a rationing of one half a cake of soap per person every two weeks, there is not much hope of keeping things clean. Time hangs heavy on everyone’s hands. But adults, after all, usually learn how to take things in their stride.”

What of their children? “Skinny, big-eyed toddlers—both boys and girls line up at the clinics. ‘This child has only six months to live,’ is the message doctors and internes give over and over again to the grieving parents. For lack of tents and teachers only one child in four can go to school, and then only through the sixth grade.

Many of the adolescent boys who should be doing productive work are roaming the roadways or listening to the flowered phrases of Communist agitators. There is no vocational training for these youths, no opportunity for them to obtain even the most menial jobs. The few orphanages are jammed to overflowing with lonely waifs.”

Context added by this archive

Printed directly beside a Genesee Furniture advertisement: a free plastic lounge rocker with any living room suite, and a two-piece Kroehler suite in mohair frieze at $149.95.

Cite this clipping

"Million Homeless Palestinian Arabs Camped in Middle East," The Flint Journal, 13 August 1953, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1953-002. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1953-002