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THE MICHIGAN DAILY
SUNDAY, MARCH 13, 1955
PAG! EIGHT TIlE 1~IICHIGAN IJAILY SUNDAY, MARCH 13, 1955
TWO PROBLEMS FOR UN:
Gaza Fighting Spotlights'
Egypt-Israel Troubles
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UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. W) -
The Gaza fighting has spotlighted
a big problem for the UN: how to
keep peace . on the Egypt-Israel
border.
The refugee riots that followed
spotlighted another: how to man-
age eight to nine hundred thou-
sand Arab refugees from Palestine
who want to go home and can't.
The second problem strains the
resources of humanity and the re-
cent desert happenings in and
around Gaza show that the UN,
after 6% years of trying, still isn't
near getting it licked.
Gaza is the old Mediterranean
city where the Bible says Samson,
history's most famous Jewish
strongman, brought down the tem-
ple of his Philistine captors. The
city stands in a 6-by-30-mile
coastal strip held by Egypt.
In the so-called Gaza strip--
formerly a part of Palestine, now
held by Egypt-the UN Relief and
Works Agency for Palestine refu-
gees has four camps for Arabs.
They are the people who fled in
the 1948 Arab-Jewish war from
neighborhoods inside what now is
Israel.
Gaza Refugees
UNRWA, in its last report as of
mid-1954, counted 212,600 such
refugees in the Gaza strip; 207,034
of them receive relief rations. They
are among a total of 887,000 Pal-
estine Arabs now living in Egypt,.
Lebanon, Syria and Jordan on the
Israeli perimeter.
Near Gaza last week, Israeli and
Egyptian troops clashed. The
Egyptians said they lost 39 killed.
They said the Israelis had at-
tacked them without provocation.
The Israelis claimed they lost 8
dead. They charged the Egyptians
hit first, in Israel. The case is be.y
fore the Security Council. Next
day, hundreds of. the refugees ri-
oted. '
Demonstrations were still going
on at the weekend. The refugees
stoned UN truce headquarters in
Gaza, tore down a UN flag, burned
UN vehicles. They also burned UN
food warehouses, destroying their
own provisions.
It would seem they had much to
thank the UN for. Since the Pal-
estine war, it had fed them. Only
last month, it had finished moving
them all from tents into concrete
huts. Together with the Egyptian
government, the UN was studying
the idea of moving 50,000 of them
to a better spot just east of the
Suez Canal.
A recent report said this study
"gives every indication that the
unusual project is feasible." The
plan is to tap the Ismailia Canal,
which runs from the Nile to the
Suez, and carry its fresh water
through a siphon tube of 15-foot
bore under the Suez Canal to ir-
rigate 52,000 acres on the oppo-
site bank.
There, at the northwest end of
the Sinai Peninsula, the refugees
could raise tomatoes, beans, pea-
nuts, melons, oranges, dates, man-
gos, meat and eggs to sell to canal
passengers and in the markets of
Egypt and the Middle East oil
centers. They could be self-sup-
'porting. UNRWA has earned 30
million dollars for the project.
The refugees had all this from
the UN. Why did they riot against
it?
Somebody suggested Communist
agents stirred them up.
Maj. Gen. Abdullah Rifaat,
Egyptian governor of Gaza, doubt-
ed this.
Cites Reasons
1. They felt Egyptian forces,
limited by the 1949 Egypt-Israel
armistice were not strong enough
to defend them. Similar riots,
though not so destructive, occur-
red after 20 Arabs were killed in
a stealthy night attack on a refu-
gee camp in the strip Aug. 28,
1953.
2. The UN had created Israel
but now did nothing "to stop Is-
raeli aggression" except pass res-
olutions. The UN General Assem-
bly, before the British quit Pal-
estine in 1948' approved a plan to
partition the country between
Arabs and Jews, but most observ-
ers agree Jewish arms actually
created the Jewish state.
3. The refugees had endured six,
years of idleness. and "only want
to return to Palestine."
So their demonstrations were
directed, among other. things,
agaist the elaborate and expensive
plan for their resettlement.
In spite of assurances to the
contrary from Egypt and UNRWA,
they were said to fear that if they
moved to new farms, they would
hurt their claims to the land they
once lived on in Palestine.
That land is now in the hands
of the Israeli government. The
Arab governments, champions..of
the refugees, say they should be
allowed to go back to it. Israel
says she can't afford to let them
come back because they would
be prime security risks.
J E T L E S S O N --The Shah of Iran in cockpit of "The
Hunter," Britain's latest supersonic fighter, gets pointers from
Major H. N. Tanner, of Los Angeles, " an "exchange pilot."
C I A N T W I N D M I L L - A crewman is dwarfed by the tail rotor and stabilizer assembly of 40-passenger Air Force
U-16 Piasecki helicopter in Philadelphia. Side open at left is air intake for one of 30,000-pound craft's two powerful engines.
CAUSE OF CANCER?'
California Lab Centers
Studies on Virus Secrets
S P A C E S T A R - Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida holds
"Space Girl of 1954" award of Foresign Press Club in Rome
for press space she garnered in foreign publications.
WITHOUT SEAL OF APPROVAL,- A sea elephant roars as it is branded
during a French mission study of migratory habits of animal life at Kerguelen Islands, between
Australiaand South.Africa. Dr. Andre Migot applies iron as Chaplain Maurice Menu holds subject.
WINTHROP H. SMITH, head of
the world's largest brokerage
firm, tells senators in Washing-
ton, D.C., he doubts the sen-
ate investigation had anything
to do with a three-billion-dol-
lar break in the stock market
earlier in the week. He testified
before senating banking com-
mittee.
BERKETEY, Calif. (A)-The vi-
rus is king in a laboratory here
where scientists seek answers to
its tantalizing .iecrets.
Viruses cause a host of diseases
-human, animal and plant. This
winter, as in many others, one va-
riety has put hundreds of chil-
dren and adults to bed for from
24 hours to several weeks, suffer-
ing from what once was just
called flu. To humans, viruses also
bring polio, the common cold,
measles, smallpox,. other diseases.
The virus causing one disease dif-
fers from that causing another.
Was a virus the beginning of
life?
Is a virus the cause of cancer?
How does a Airus carry out its
fantastic sabotage of living cells,
making the cell manufacture up to
hundreds of new viruses?
Can viruses be created artificial-
ly by science?
Can they be tamed, altered to
make them harmless, free of their
old sting of disease?
And can viruses be produced--
intentionally -- which would do
many good things for you, even
perhaps protect you from radia-
tion dangers of A-bomb or H-bomb
fall-out?
Research Laboratory
These are the kinds of questions
being asked and possibilities being
considered in the research of the
virus laboratory at the University
of California. The laboratory is
directed by Dr. Wendell M. Stan-
ley, winner of a Nobel Prize for
brilliant work on the nature of
viruses.
_A virus works by invading a
particular kind of cell-the polio
virus for example strikes nerve
cells. Viruses cannot reproduce or
duplicate themselves except inside
their favorite target type of cell.
But once inside, they commandeer
the machinery of the cell, forcing
it to produce many new viruses.
The damage they do inside the cell
brings the symptoms of sickness.
But viruses, all far tinier than
bacteria, are not all bad. Some are
useful, One, known as bacterio-
phage, destroys a type of bacteria
found in the intestines.
In the virus laboratory, "our em-
phasis is on, the virus itself, not
thoe cicAon eov wim,_ rcnn,1can nrt
v-
search teams are determining the
chemical differences b e t w e e n
strains. -It appears that the dif-
ference can be in just one amino
acid or protein brick out of which
viruses are made, Dr. Stanley
said.
Laboratory researchers are chip-
ping away at viruses, taking them
apart bit by bit to learn what all
the different part sare. This opens
the possibility of ultimately syn-
thesizing viruses, making them ar-
tificially.
And by new techniques, scien-
tists now can study what happens
between one single virus particle
and one single living cell. They'
hope to trace exactly what hap-
pens to the intricate machinery of
the cell when a virus takes control.
Is a virus akin to or is it a gene,
the chemical unit of heredity? In
some ways, they act like genes.
First Living Organisms
There is reason to suspect that
viruses were the first living or-
ganisms on earth, coming from
some spontaneous organization of
protein material which was capa-
ble of reproducing itself. At tines
viruses behave like living things.
But they also can be crystallized
like salt without losing their abili-
ty later to spring to life and re-
produce.
Some viruses are known to cause
certain types of cancers in mice,
chickens and rabbits. Are human
cancers due to some yet unrecog-
nized virus?
Time will tell. Time and the
skills of scientists working on
projects such as those here. The
assault on virus problems takes
teamwork of physicists, chemists,
physicians, p 1 a n t pathologists,
bacteriologists, botanists. The lab-
oratory has 30 researchers with
advanced degrees, some 50 techni-
cians, and six positions for visit-
ing foreign scientists.
There is no doubt that viruses
exert profound influences on liv-
ing cells. To Dr. Stanley, that
raises the intriguing possibility of
developing viruses which would
do helpful, healthful things to liv-
ing things, from human to plant.
Protection a g a i n s t radiation
damage or sickness could be one
T U R N - A B O U T - Film star Yvonne DeCarlo, most of
the time a subject, gets behind a camera to photograph Princess
Margaret in Nassau, Bahamas, during latter's Caribbean tour.
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A
ICEMAN IN AFGHANISTAN --.An Afghan
coolie carries a block of ice cut from a frozen paddy field near
Kabul to a storehouse for use in summer when weather gets hot4
S U R P R I S E - A passerby gapes at suit of aluminum-which
it's claimed can withstand 2.300-degree centigrade heat - worn
by man enroute to display it at London equipment exhibit
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