The New York Times · New York, New York · 23 June 1998

CP-1998-022

West Bank Arabs Scrape By as They Lose Housing

By Joel Greenberg

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Transcribed from the clipping

KHIRBET KILKES, West Bank, June 22 — On a sunbaked hill outside Hebron, a Palestinian family lives in a tent beside the rubble of its house, which has been demolished for the third time, after Israeli authorities denied the family a building permit.

Surrounded by broken furniture, smashed household goods and other wreckage, the parents, Zuhur and Youssef al-Atrash, and their 10 children live in sweltering heat without running water or a toilet and drink water from a tanker truck that serves nearby parched Palestinian communities. Their water well was demolished along with the house.

“This is what Netanyahu has left us,” Mrs. Atrash said, waving toward a roofless floor where upholstered car seats were arranged around an Arab water pipe under the jagged remains of a wrecked ceiling. “We’re living like cave men, in a garage dump.”

In Jewish settlements that flank the roads to Hebron rows of new stone houses are sprouting on the rocky hills, and there is enough water to sprinkle gardens among the red-shingled houses. But demolitions of Arab houses in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have sharply increased in recent weeks, leaving scores of people homeless because their dwellings lacked building permits.

The policy seems to be aimed at consolidating Israel’s hold on East Jerusalem and on areas of the West Bank that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Government seeks to keep. A spokesman for the State Department, James P.

Rubin, has called the demolitions a wrong signal at a time when efforts to restart stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have reached a delicate stage. The Clinton Administration is reportedly pressing for a suspension of further demolitions as part of a deal to renew the negotiations.

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Context added by this archive

Date check: the running head reads …E NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 1998 (the first letters of “THE” are cut off at the left edge of the scan) — matches the slide date

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