Courier Post · Camden, New Jersey · 20 December 1987

CP-1987-004

Sordid camp breeds foes of Israelis

AP (same Karin Laub dispatch)

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Transcribed from the clipping

“JABALIA, Occupied Gaza Strip (AP) — This crowded refugee camp, the largest and most densely populated in the Gaza Strip, has become a center of resistance in the last two weeks of anti-Israeli rioting and bloodshed. Residents say they have nothing to lose by throwing stones at Israeli soldiers armed with submachine guns.

Many here have lived in squalor for decades. ‘When my sons go outside to demonstrate, I’m afraid for them, but I’m not going to stop them,’ said Neama Khalil Abu Sisi, 55, whose son, Hatem, 17, was killed in a clash with soldiers the previous week.

Yesterday, about 30 camp youths confronted a dozen soldiers, throwing stones from behind barricades of burning tires and defiantly raising the outlawed Palestinian flag. In what appeared to be a well-rehearsed game, the soldiers advanced slowly, firing shots in the air. The protesters retreated into narrow side alleys.

Minutes later, a group of soldiers dragged a Palestinian teen-ager into an army base inside the camp. The boy’s mother followed a few yards behind, shouting at the soldiers… Jabalia is the most densely populated of the eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, and it is the only one to have an Israeli army base within its boundaries. The camp was set up in 1948.

The stone huts built then as temporary shelters have long since turned into permanent housing… About 60,000 members of the Gaza Strip’s 100,000-strong labor force work in Israel. Jabalia has been the site of daily violent clashes since Dec. 8 when an Israeli truck slammed into two vans carrying Palestinian workers.

Two camp residents were killed… The camp doctor said the army will not be able to quell the protests with force. ‘They (the camp residents) demonstrate because they have nothing to lose,’ he said.”

Context added by this archive

The same Associated Press copy as the Press & Sun-Bulletin the same week, under a different headline. The archive had held about a third of it.

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