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The Evening Sun · 31 March 1976

CP-1976-004

Galilee Calm; Arabs Set Burials

Associated Press, Tel Aviv

Galilee Calm; Arabs Set Burials — The Evening Sun, 31 March 1976
The Evening Sun · 31 March 1976

Transcribed from the clipping

“Tel Aviv (AP)—Israeli police patrolled in force in tense but calm Arab villages in Galilee today as villagers prepared to bury six Israeli Arabs killed by police and Army gunfire. In occupied west Jordan, where spasms of anti-Israeli rioting have erupted for weeks, military officials said demonstrators stopped cars and lit bonfires in the streets of some towns, but no violence was reported. There were fears that the funerals in Galilee would ignite new rioting. But Police Minister Shlomo Hillel ordered security forces not to shoot unless lives were threatened. He lifted a curfew imposed on villages north of Nazareth… Five of the Arabs were killed Tuesday during riots that accompanied a 24-hour strike by Arab citizens of Israel which the Israeli Communist party called to protest government purchase of some 1,600 acres of arid Arab land for housing and development projects. Another Arab was killed in a pre-strike riot Monday night. Authorities reported 31 Israeli Arabs and about 50 police and soldiers were injured during the riots, and at least 285 persons were rounded up for investigation… Tewfik Zayad, the Communist mayor of Nazareth and the leader of the strike, charged that ‘police clashes came only “when police provoked the people.”’ He claimed the police ‘ran after people and shot at them.’ The fighting was the first between Israeli troops and Arab citizens since Israel became a state in 1948. The Arabs who chose Israeli citizenship then rather than join the Palestinian exodus to Lebanon, Syria and Jordan and their children now make up 16 per cent of the population of Israel. They have equal rights with Jews under the constitution and enjoy the highest Arab standard of living in the Middle East. But they have not been allowed to form their own political parties, and the youngest generation has turned away from Israel’s ruling Labor party to the anti-Zionist Communist party and the Palestine Liberation Organization.”

Photograph caption

“ROCK-THROWER ARRESTED—Truncheon-wielding Israeli troops run an Arab youth down the street by his hair after they caught him hurling rocks at police officers and soldiers in the riot-hit town of Nazareth.”

Context added by this archive

The day after Land Day, with the mayor of Nazareth quoted, the land given as 1,600 acres, and a sentence that says this was the first fighting between Israeli troops and Arab citizens since 1948. The last paragraph says they have equal rights under the constitution and then says they have not been allowed to form their own political parties. The photograph is captioned as an arrest and shows a boy being dragged down a street by his hair.

Cite this item

"Galilee Calm; Arabs Set Burials," The Evening Sun, 31 March 1976. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1976-004. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1976-004

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-1976-004.

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