The New York Times · 19 November 1969

CP-1969-023

Tension Grips Gaza Strip After Killing and Reprisal

By JAMES FERON

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Transcribed from the clipping

GAZA, Nov. 18—A few miles north of the occupied Gaza Strip, at the last major Israeli intersection, soldiers stand hitching rides to their posts in the sector. A highway sign reads “Road Closed.” The road is not closed, however. The sign is simply a device to discourage casual visitors. Once inside the Gaza Strip, it is not hard to see why.

At the checkpoint, an Israeli soldier asks the visitor where he is going and why. Finally convinced that it is a matter of official business, the soldier says “O.K.” But he indicates that he is coming along, for the visitor’s protection. As he gets in he rolls up the side window and signals to the driver to do the same as a precaution against grenades.

“It is not good times,’ the soldier says. An afternoon in Gaza town offers additional evidence to support the soldier’s assessment. The main street is deserted, with all the shops’ shutters pulled down. The nearby market also is empty. An Israeli half-track sits in the main square, another in the market.

The areas are under curfew, imposed as punishment because residents have refused to come forward with information about terrorist incidents. Traffic moves freely through the streets, but shopkeepers who were assumed to have seen the men who threw grenades at Israeli patrols are prevented from doing business.

In addition, there is a night curfew, from 8 P.M. to 4 A.M., which prohibits all movement and is tightly enforced by the occupation authorities. Last night, in Rafah, a town in the Gaza Strip, two residents were killed by Israeli soldiers for being on the street at 10:30 P.M.

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan at 2.2x to 26x by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by OCR and not by a person. Date confirmed from the page: the folio prints 'THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1969' in full, and 19 November 1969 was a Wednesday. Printed error kept as set: the Israeli soldier's quotation opens with a double quote and closes with a single. The excerpt stops one sentence short of the end of the column on purpose: the following sentence turns on a word that resolves at 26x to either 'Israel' or 'Israeli' and could not be settled, and that sentence carries an Israeli official saying 'there is not much tension, and it is quiet' on the day the same column reports two Rafah residents shot dead for being on the street. The two dead are not named.

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