Refugees Allowed Back

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31412, 4 July 1967, Page 15

Refugees Allowed Back

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) TEL AVIV, July 3. Israel decided yesterday to permit Arab refugees to return to their homes in the Israeli-occu-pied sector of the Jordan river’s west bank, the Associated Press reported. Arabs fled by the thousand to the east bank of the river

after the Israelis took over Western Jordan in the six-day war last month. An Israeli announcement said refugees who wanted to return to their homes on the west bank would be allowed to do so until August 10. It added that full details of the Government decision will be published on July 10.

A dispatch from Amman, Jordan, quoted a Jordanian Army officer as saying Arab refugees reported Israeli soldiers shot and killed three Arab men trying to sneak back across the River Jordan to Israeli-occupied Jordan. He said there was no official confirmation of the report.

The Israeli Government decision stipulates that persons wishing to cross to the west bank will have to provide evidence that they resided there, and will have to satisfy Israeli authorities they do not constitute a security risk. No distinction will be made between permanent dwellers of the west bank and Palestine refugees wishing to return to their camp homes. The number of refugees from Israel-occupied Jordan has been estimated at 80,000 to 100,000. Up to now Israel permitted Arabs wishing to leave for Jordan to do so and provided them with free bus transport to the wrecked Allenby bridge on the Jordan river.

The Prime Minister, Mr Levi Eshkol, announced to his Government that he had ap-

pointed a team of experts to draw up proposals for the rehabilitation of Arab refugees now residing in camps in Israel-occupied territories. Heading the team of experts is Mr Raanan Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency’s Settlement Department, which bore the brunt of settling in Israel hundreds of thousands of Jewish newcomers in the last two decades.

Under Mr Weitz, committees of experts will be set up in the fields of economics, agriculture, irrigation, industry, artisan-type industry, commerce and social welfare.

About 80 per cent of the Arabs who fled from the west bank of Jordan after the beginning of the Arab-Israeli war were already registered refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said.

Mr John Reddaway, the agency’s deputy commis-sioner-general, told a press conference that many of those who had fled were from three refugee camps near Jericho which had housed refugees from the 1948 ArabIsraeli war.

“Of their original population of 63,000, only 3000 to 4000 remain,” he said. He thought the main motive for the exodus was fear of what the Israelis might do. Mr Reddaway estimated that about 70,000 people were now crowded into schools and other public buildings on the east bank of the Jordan. He said "U.N.R.W.A.’s main

need at the moment was for tents to establish five new refugee camps. “We have received only 2000 of the 20,000 family tents needed,” he said, “another 5000 tents are now on their way from the United States.”

He told questioners that U.N.R.W.A. had been receiving effective co-operation from the Israeli authorities in restoring essential services. He confirmed that he had seen the Israeli Governor of the Gaza Strip about looting of stores from the former camp of the United Nations Emergency Force at Rafah, where 12 Arab looters were shot dead yesterday by Israeli troops.

Peking Demonstrations.— Chinese demonstrators continued to make life uncomfortable for Burmese Embassy staff and their families in Peking yesterday by keeping up the psychological pressure of constant demonstrations outside the embassy compound.—Peking, July 3.