Refugee Crisis Forming On Jordan’s West Bank

Flight From Israelis

From L.A. Times-Washington Post Service and NYT Dispatches

Refugee Crisis Forming On Jordan’s West Bank — Courier-Journal, 13 June 1967 — Courier-Journal · Louisville, Kentucky · 13 June 1967

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“A new refugee problem of tragic proportions is shaping up as a result of the Middle East war and Israeli occupation of Jordan’s West Bank area.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) issued an urgent appeal yesterday to the world for money and medical supplies to cope with a flood of new refugees into Jordan—a flood now estimated to have reached the 100,000 mark.

UNRWA officials in Beirut said 80 per cent of the new refugees were people already on their rolls, which number 1.3 million Arabs who fled Palestine in 1948, plus their descendants born to the refugee life.

Meanwhile, the United States was reported by Johnson administration officials yesterday to have cautioned Israel against any forceful eviction of Palestinian refugees and Jordanian citizens from the territory it has occupied in Jordan.

In reply, the Israeli government was said to have given general assurances of humanitarian treatment for any refugees and Jordanian citizens remaining. Within State Department circles, however, there is some question whether the Israeli government may be encouraging some of the Arab residents to leave strategic areas near the Israeli border.

The new refugees fled across the Jordan River to the east during last week’s warfare despite appeals by Jordan’s King Hussein to stay where they were. It was a similar exodus in 1948 — that time at the urging of some Arab leaders who wanted to clear civilians out of the area so Arab armies would not harm them — that led to the refugee problem itself.

Despite Hussein’s pleas, the new refugees are reported still clogging the roads leading to the Jordan River. Although most appeared to come from camps on the West Bank, many villages—”

Context added by this archive

Four days after the war ended, one column carries both accounts of why people leave: the State Department wondering whether Israel is encouraging it, and 1948 explained as the urging of Arab leaders. The subheading between them is a question the paper asks itself — “Encouragement From Israel?”

The standing head is “Flight From Israelis,” the word occupation is in the first sentence, and the item beside it on the page is about rioting in the Negro section of Cincinnati.

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"Refugee Crisis Forming On Jordan’s West Bank," Courier-Journal, 13 June 1967, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1967-019. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1967-019