U. N. Protection Due Both Sides in Gaza

On the Record

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Transcribed from the clipping

“The conflict that arose recently between Joseph Alsop, Herald Tribune columnist, writing from Gaza, and the United Nations, which has questioned his accuracy, does not seem to involve much of factual substance… And it is not only necessary to protect Israel from Arab raiders but to protect the border Arab communities from Israelis, who in the raids and counter-raids of the last eight years have killed far more Arabs than Arabs have killed Israelis.

This a matter of record. The U. N. (publicly confirmed by the Israeli delegate, Abba Eban) has reported that raids into Israel during the whole period since the 1949 armistice have resulted in 443 Israeli deaths. On Arab casualties no figures are available for the whole period. But precise U. N. figures are obtainable from January 1, 1955, through September 30, 1956.

During this critical 21 months, prior to the attack on Sinai and Gaza, 496 Arabs, military and civilians, were killed, compared with 121 Israelis, the number of Arab deaths in less than two years thus exceeding by 53 the sum total of Israeli deaths in the whole period since the armistice.

There is also available a special report by the director of the UNRWA in the Near East, covering November 1, 1956 to mid-December, the first 45 days of Israeli occupation of Gaza, during which 452 Arabs are known by ‘trustworthy sources’ to have been killed. These were not casualties of fighting between Israeli and Egyptian troops, which lasted only a few hours.

The report is specific and detailed as to places and persons. The UNRWA director (Mr. Labouisse) in his past year’s report estimates that five Arabs have been killed for every Israeli in the frontier clashes. So if the U. N. has failed to protect Israelis under past arrangements, it has failed to an even greater extent to protect Arabs.

As far as Gaza is concerned, protection for both is its mission.”

Context added by this archive

A syndicated columnist doing the arithmetic in 1957, with United Nations figures and the Israeli delegate’s confirmation attached to them: four hundred and ninety-six Arabs against a hundred and twenty-one Israelis in twenty-one months, and four hundred and fifty-two Arabs killed in the first forty-five days of what she calls the Israeli occupation of Gaza.

The subheadings are “Israel Rejects Patrols” and “Israelis Inflict Most Deaths.”

Cite this clipping

"U. N. Protection Due Both Sides in Gaza," Evening Star, 23 April 1957, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1957-019. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1957-019