Rootless in Gaza

As underendowed a stretch of land as exists anywhere in the world, the Gaza Strip hardly seems to qualify as a territorial prize. The 25-mile-long seaside sliver of formerly Egyptian-run territory is more thickly settled than The Netherlands; it is more crowded with problems than any other area occupied by Israel in the Middle East war. Some 60% of its 350,000 inhabitants are refugees who lost their lands to the Israelis in 1948. Most of them live on the dole in eight refugee camps, sitting in the shade of their huts and shuffling sad-eyed from one day to the next. Their artificial economy is based largely on money from relatives working abroad; the once lively trade in luxury imports resulting from Gaza's status as a duty-free zone has ended.

Tourist Attraction. Yet the Israelis seem more intent on holding onto the Gaza Strip than any other part of their conquered territory, except Jerusalem. They are slowly integrating this arid area into Israel, and impressing on the Arabs the permanence of their presence. The reason: Worthless in every other respect, the Gaza Strip is important to Israel's security, since it probes like a finger into Israeli territory. Egyptian troops massed there before the outbreak of the war, and the Strip had long been a base for Arab terrorist raids.

To cement their wartime conquest, the Israelis are pouring $1,000,000 a month into Gaza. They have replaced Egypt's currency with Israeli pounds, and completed new power lines linking Gaza city with Israel's main grid. Gaza Arabs have been forced to channel through Israeli, rather than Arab, banks the money sent them from abroad. Gaza's fishermen and its orange and grapefruit growers are getting not only advice but also improved equipment from the Israelis. More than 5,500 Arabs have been put to work patching and widening the Strip's bumpy roads. Another growing source of revenue is the influx of Israeli tourists, who descend on Gaza to snap pictures of rusty Egyptian tanks and other war trophies.

Arab Exodus. For the first time in 20 years, the Gazans are allowed to travel outside the Strip. With Israeli encouragement, more than 30,000 of them have gone to seek jobs in Jordan or the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Arabs charge that the Israelis are allowing them to leave for political rather than humane motives, since every departing Arab is one potential terrorist fewer to deal with and one mouth fewer to feed. But the rate of the Arab exodus by bus and hired taxi has dropped off lately as word has spread that few jobs are available in Jordan.

Despite the improvements, the Israelis have won few friends among the Cairo-oriented Gaza Arabs. The natural hostility of the conquered is heightened by the fact that the Israelis react harshly to terrorist incidents. They dynamite scores of Arab homes, detain hundreds of suspects, impose long and frequent curfews, and at times even stop food distribution. Last week the Gaza Strip was the scene of the first major eruption of pent-up Arab resentment over Israeli occupation in the year since the war.

A group of 200 Arab women set off days of demonstrations and street clashes by marching on the fortified Gaza headquarters of the Israeli military governor to protest the all-night detention of their husbands and kinsmen. The men--some 2,000 in all--had been herded into sheep pens for questioning, following a terrorist mine explosion that killed two Israeli farmers and injured five others. The men were released, but the sparks of protest spread, and two days later Israeli occupation troops for the first time had to fire their weapons over the heads of demonstrators in downtown Gaza city. Arab crowds chanted "Nasser! Nasser!" and the Arab terrorist war cry "Slaughter the Jews!" and stoned government offices and Israeli military and tourist cars from behind a street barricade.

Long Hot Summer. Angered by taunts and stones from teen-age Arab high school girls forming a human barrier across a main highway, Israeli soldiers next day lowered their sights and wounded five of the girls with submachine-gun fire. Inflamed by Radio Cairo's incessant propaganda broadcasts, jeering women and schoolgirls linked arms to block other Gaza roads, but dispersed when troops arrived. At Gaza's Palestine High School, troops with truncheons fought a bloody, classroom-by-classroom battle with 900 students, forcing them out into the street to dismantle a waist-high barricade that they had built. By week's end Gaza seethed with ill-concealed anti-Israeli feeling, and Jeeps mounted with .50-caliber Brownings and troop-laden halftracks were enforcing a nervous calm on the scorching, dusty streets. There was reason for the Israeli fear that the demonstrations and four recent terrorist minings foreshadow a long, hot summer Strip.

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