Fort Myers News-Press · 29 August 1971

CP-1971-008

Gaza Strip Homes Bulldozed by Jews

By Richard Eder, New York Times Service, Gaza

Transcribed from the clipping

“GAZA — In the swarming, bone-white refugee camp of Jabaliya, five mukhtars, or headmen, sit on an old bench outside the camp office asking futile questions and making futile complaints about the bulldozer that is razing houses nearby… More than 1,200 families have been ousted so far and the program continues… A visitor to a group of houses marked for demolition found men, women and children at work tearing down the rooms they had added to the houses and loading the stones aboard the trucks along with their furniture. They will use them to put up new shelters. They clustered, in obvious anguish, around the visitor. ‘I would rather eat sand in Gaza than go to El Arish,’ an old man called out. ‘When Jews are arrested in Russia, all the world hears about it. Aren’t we human, too?’ 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. Another point, one partly conceded by the Israeli authorities, is that jobs are scarce in El Arish and that a refugee working in Gaza finds it impossible to move so far. The central objection is to leaving the strip… ‘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 U.N.R.W.A. gives them free food and suddenly we transfer them.’ The refugees fear that the plan for El Arish is simply the opening move to scatter them through Israeli-administered Arab territories and thus end the Gaza problem. That they feel, would eliminate their one bargaining counter before world opinion: Their miserable concentration in what is still a no-man’s land and possibly the only important populated territory in the world that no nation claims… A high Israeli officer was watching the demolitions in Shati when a woman came up to him. Things are much better, she told him. She liked the new, wide streets. How about the neighbors who had to move? the officer asked. She was sure they were happy. ‘But, sir,’ she added, ‘just don’t touch my house. Be blessed.’”

Context added by this archive

The same New York Times dispatch the Minneapolis Tribune ran a week earlier under the headline “Relocating of Gaza refugees upsets many.” Here the headline is Gaza Strip Homes Bulldozed by Jews. The copy is the same; the subheadings are “1,200 Families Ousted,” “Protests Fizzle” and “Eat Sand in Gaza.” It ends on a woman in Shati telling an officer she likes the wide new streets and asking him not to touch her house. It runs beside a full-page Sears furniture sale.

Cite this item

"Gaza Strip Homes Bulldozed by Jews," Fort Myers News-Press, 29 August 1971. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1971-008. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1971-008

Elsewhere in the archive

• Israeli Program Ousts Number of Refugee Families in Gaza StripDaily Oklahoman · 20 August 1971 · the same dispatch, carried by another paper
• Relocating of Gaza refugees upsets manyMinneapolis Tribune · 22 August 1971 · the same dispatch, carried by another paper
• Terror Stalks GazaBeaumont Journal · 29 July 1971 · the same year
• Terror Still Stalks Residents Of Gaza Strip As Political Murders Increase In NumberThe Sun · 1 August 1971 · the same year
• What to Do With 400,000 RefugeesThe Morning Union · 25 August 1971 · the same year