Israeli Program Ousts Number of Refugee Families in Gaza Strip

By Richard Eder, New York Times Service, Gaza

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“GAZA — 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 guerrillas’ 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… It has been like a minor earthquake in Gaza, the quarter-century-old monument to the wretchedness that the conflict of Arabs and Jews has brought to the Middle East… The population has protested without effect.

A general strike, like others in the past, fizzled this week after the army sealed 15 striking shops and threatened similar measures against others. The terrorists threw grenades, but the victims were the refugees themselves… 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.”

Context added by this archive

The earliest of the three printings of this dispatch, and the reporter is named here: Richard Eder. Nine days and three papers later the same sentences carry three different headlines — ousts, relocating, bulldozed by Jews. It runs beside a half-price dress shirt advertisement and a revolving charge account.

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"Israeli Program Ousts Number of Refugee Families in Gaza Strip," Daily Oklahoman, 20 August 1971, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1971-009. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1971-009