March 2nd, 1951
HOMELESS IN GAZA
The only exit from the Gaza Strip, which is hemmed in by Israel, is to Egypt, and there the refugees are not welcome. They are virtually imprisoned in the area, their only means of escape being a dangerous moonlight flit through Jewish territory.
Meanwhile, 70,000 of them have crammed themselves into Gaza town, more than doubling its inhabitants. Over-crowded rooms are let at extortionate rents and those unable to afford them have taken to tents, makeshift shelters, even holes in the ground.
On every bit of spare ground pitiable shacks can be seen, made of canvas, sacking, boughs of trees, and bits of tin. Outside the town huge scattered camps have grown up round the villages and two former British Army camps.
In Breij about 8,000 refugees are in tents or makeshifts and 6,000 in buildings of varying degrees of soundness. Many of these are large barracks with fairly sound walls and roofs but lacking doors and windows.
Inside each is a honeycomb of 30 or 40 cubicles, divided by mud walls or partitions of blankets. In each cell live one, two, or three families, the lucky ones being those with a window. In the larders and kitchens of these ex-Army canteens the refugees huddle among the sinks and stoves, and in the bath-houses they lie down to sleep among the showers or in the boiler rooms.
Those under canvas have fared no better, for many tents which were in reasonable shape when issued quickly rotted in the rain and gales of winter, and total replacement was impossible.
The tents, too, are over-crowded, and even the small ones are often divided by a canvas partition separating two families. Privacy, even by Arab standards, is impossible in such conditions. In addition, there is the corrosion of idleness and despair, eating into moral fibre and breeding bitterness and discontent.
The Gaza scene, especially in spring, is a pleasant one, with its undulating hills and deep green orange groves. There are orchards of almond and fig and fields of corn and vegetables.
But all the crops depend upon expensive artificial irrigation or the short rainy season, and among the oases of cultivation are great tracts of desert sand. There are no possibilities of agricultural or industrial development, and all the Clapp Commission could suggest was some road works and tree planting to prevent the encroachment of the sand.
The United Nations rations keep the recipients above starvation level, and there are extras for those who can afford them; but resources are running out, and hunger makes the temptation to cheat and steal overwhelming. A few hundred are employed on weaving and tailoring and 1,500 on relief work, but many thousands of able-bodied men have no occupation whatever.
Bodies as well as hearts grow sick with hope deferred, and though there has been no major epidemic there is a high incidence of tuberculosis and respiratory diseases and inadequate means of treating them. At the English Church Missionary Society hospital Dr. Hargreaves and his staff are heroically coping with 90 in-patients instead of 30 and vast out-patient clinics.
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