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Minneapolis Tribune · 22 August 1971

CP-1971-007

Relocating of Gaza refugees upsets many

By Richard Eder, New York Times Service, Gaza Strip

Relocating of Gaza refugees upsets many — Minneapolis Tribune, 22 August 1971
Minneapolis Tribune · 22 August 1971

Transcribed from the clipping

“In the swarming, bone-white refugee camp of Jabaliya, five mukhtars, or headmen, sit on a bench outside the camp office, asking futile questions and making futile complaints about the bulldozer that is razing houses nearby. An old mukhtar in a black, gold-threaded robe speaks, pushing out his phrases and letting them hang in the air, tiredly. ‘The Israelis know the commandos’ names,’ he said. ‘If they are caught, they are killed or arrested. That is individual punishment. But as for the demolition of our houses and the eviction of our families, that is a collective punishment for which the refugees have no crime or fault.’ The Israelis, without major publicity and without making their ultimate intentions completely clear, are evicting families from the three most crowded camps here, offering them other quarters — mostly in El Arish, south of the Gaza Strip — and bulldozing their houses. More than 1,200 families have been ousted so far and the program continues. The immediate purpose is to clear roadways through the camps to permit Israeli patrols to go through in their quest for terrorists… It is the first far-reaching effort to change conditions in the strip, where more than 300,000 Palestinian refugees sit in squalor, frustration and fear that have lasted since 1948, when they fled after Israel was established… The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides food, educational and health services to the refugees, has been studying the situation. It has said nothing publicly, other than to deny that it had agreed to the evictions, but its field officers appear deeply disturbed. The Israelis point to the paralysis and hopelessness, and above all to the terror, that have dominated the camps. Apart from killing five Israeli soldiers and injuring 85 in the last year, members of Palestinian resistance groups have assassinated 135 residents of Gaza and injured more than 500. Fifty-six terrorists have been killed by the Israelis and more than 50 captured… Israeli officials are not yet prepared to discuss fully the long-range aspects. They say they are legally justified in moving refugees from Gaza into occupied Egyptian territory in Sinai Peninsula… The refugees complain about the quarters in El Arish. The Israelis say that they are at least as good as the camp houses and that most — among them flats abandoned by Egyptian officers at the time of the 1967 war — are much better… ‘I would rather eat sand in Gaza than go to El Arish,’ an old man called out. ‘When Jews are arrested in Russia, the world hears about it. Aren’t we human, too?’… ‘These camps seem like hell to me, but I can see that they might seem like paradise to them,’ said a senior Israeli officer. ‘They have lived here 23 years, the UNRWA gives them free food and suddenly we transfer them.’”

Context added by this archive

The headmen of Jabaliya on a bench outside the camp office while the bulldozer works, and one of them naming the distinction the whole page turns on: individual punishment for the men they want, collective punishment for everyone else. Both sides’ counts are printed in consecutive paragraphs, and the Israeli officer’s explanation is the last word. The word for moving people out of Gaza, in the Israeli officials’ own sentence, is transfer.

Cite this item

"Relocating of Gaza refugees upsets many," Minneapolis Tribune, 22 August 1971. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1971-007. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1971-007

Elsewhere in the archive

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1971-007.

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