The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1954-01-29

RIdD IGIuSSSS III JOIQdu spent
most of their lives in the fields
across the border, To them a
crossing is as easy as going across
a street.
This is called "infiltration."
Israeli police say infiltration
causes most of the Border troubles
and is deliberately organized.
Authorities in Jordan acknowledge
there is a great deal of it and
say they are making every effort
to stop it.
In the early days after the war,
refugees who had buried their
money in orange groves or Sc
creted it under a house streamed
across the border to recover it.
Even now there is an understand
able compulsion for refugees to
|prowl around their old villages or
to try to get oranges from some
lof the trees they planted.
Some Arabs with homes on the
border can see Jewish farmers
cultivating fields taken away from
them in the armistice negotiations.
Budrus is a small border village
near Kibya, where Israeli soldiers
destroyed a large part of the town
and killed 62 persons in October.
The village lands of Budrus were
reduced from 5000 acres to about
l 600 by the armistice.
A large part of an olive grove
was taken from the village. The
school was put in the demilitarized
zone and it was necessary to move
the children into a makeshift
schoolhouse and pay rent for it.
The Arabs in the village formerly
sold their vegetables and fruits in
LYDIA, now four miles away in
Israe. There are many other
examples of mosques, schools,
lands and wells being sliced from
villages.
The loss of a piece of land Is
tragedy to the Arab farmer. For
a piece of land to lie idle in the
demilitarized zone or beyond, when
it could produce food for the work,
ing, is incomprehensible.
In this setting, Maj. Gen. Vagn
Bennike, chief of the United Ma.
tons truce supervision organiza
ton. said recently:
1.-THE present situation on the
Israel-Jordan demareation line is
due to a large extent to the prob
lem of infiltration. One of the caus.
es of civilian crossing of the de-
marcation line is for illegal cul-
tivation. Almost all cases of illegal
cultivation with which the Mixed
ArmiStice Commission has had to
deal are cases of cultivation by
Arabs of lands which have been
separated from Arab villages by
the armiStice demarcation lines. 3"
The illegal traffic across the
armiStice line is by no means one
way. From 1s49 through October
1858, Jordan complained that PIP
crossings of the line by Israeli
military units violated the arm
lstice. Jordan further complained
of 81 cases of unarmed crossings.
The pattern is different on the
Israeli side. Israel, in the same
period, complained of 422 cross
lngs by unarmed individuals or
groups, 10 crossings by armed
individuals or groups. These are
the infiltrators, armed and I'M
armed. Israel made IS complaints
OF crossings by military units.
There has been some calculated
or madvertant notation to trouble
by the new proprietors of former
Arab orange groves, one United
Nations official said. Near GAL
qlllye, he said, Israeli farmers
harvested the oranges from groves
owned by Arabs, then stacked the
crates ii full view of the Arabs.
The Arabs naturally felt they
should go and get some" he add
ed. In few cases ambushes have
been laid near such orange
groves"
Israel has string of agricultural
settlements along the border, all