Imminent Tragedy Of The Refugees Constitutes Grim Legacy Of Fight

Arabs Flee Jordan’s West Bank

By Joe A. Morris, Jr., The Los Angeles Times, Beirut

Imminent Tragedy Of The Refugees Constitutes Grim Legacy Of Fight — The Anniston Star, 14 June 1967 — The Anniston Star · Anniston, Alabama · 14 June 1967

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“BEIRUT — 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) Monday issued an urgent appeal to the world for money and medical supplies to cope with a flood of new refugees into Jordan, now estimated to have reached the 100,000 mark.

UNRWA officials here said that 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. The new refugees fled across the Jordan River 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 — which 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 there are also reported deserted or semideserted… Perhaps 400,000 refugees remain in Israeli-occupied territory on the west bank.

Officials here had little information about conditions in the occupied area, but UNRWA Commissioner General Laurence Michelmore has authorized the continuation of services there on humanitarian grounds.

This may be difficult since the Israeli army did not spare UNRWA when it seized every vehicle it could get moving during the takeover… UNRWA carefully sidestepped any question of implicit political recognition of the Israeli territorial acquistions by emphasizing that continued services behind the lines were being carreid out on humanitarian grounds… More than half the refugees on its rolls appear at present to be technically ineligible for aid.”

Context added by this archive

The same sentence as the Courier-Journal ran the day before, from the same Los Angeles Times copy: the 1948 exodus explained as the urging of Arab leaders who wanted to clear civilians out so Arab armies would not harm them.

Beside it, a Crawford cartoon of Uncle Sam holding a UN bag, captioned “All Dressed Up And No Place To Go,” with notes at his feet reading GET LOST! — SYRIA, NO THANKS! — CAIRO and DON’T SHOW YOUR FACE AROUND HERE! — ISRAEL. “acquistions” and “carreid” are the paper’s.

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"Imminent Tragedy Of The Refugees Constitutes Grim Legacy Of Fight," The Anniston Star, 14 June 1967, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1967-025. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1967-025