The leaders of seven towns and villages in the Gaza Strip today hailed the Israel Government’s decision to continue its administration of the Arab area and asked new economic and social welfare services even as Israel revealed plans to further tie in the Gaza economy with that of the Jewish State and raise the standard of living in the 25-mile-long Strip.
At a meeting with the Israeli Military Governor of the Gaza Strip, Lt. Col. Haim Gaon, the Arab political leaders stressed the improvements in the employment situation, in agriculture and in sanitation which had already taken place. They voiced the formal decisions of their town and village councils urging that measures be taken to strengthen and expand these services.
In Gaza itself, a committee of leading residents, headed by the chairman of the town’s Supreme Moslem Council, long considered the unofficial representative of the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, Israel’s implacable foe, requested expansion of the economic, educational and social services already in effect. A petition signed by the chairman and member’s including a lawyer, a physician, merchants, farmers and the manager of a local bus company asked that all institutions which still are closed in Gaza be reopened and offered the aid of the signatories in Israeli development projects for the town.
Meanwhile, it was revealed that within the next two months work will be begun on linking Gaza farmlands into Israel’s complex irrigation to bring in sufficient water this summer to increase irrigated lands in the Strip by 50 percent. The Israel Government will subsidize water prices and, as a result, water from the Yarkon River will cost Gaza Arab farmers less than Israeli farmers in the Negev.
Israel has reached agreement with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the Strip to employ Palestine Arab refugees in an afforestation program to plant 5,000 dunams (1,250 acres) of had annually in trees. UNRWA, meanwhile, has agreed to strike out of textbooks used in schools for refugees, passages which incite hatred of Israel.
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