Chapter 10: Solving the refugee problem, December 1948 - September 1949
The Palestine Conciliation Commission and Lausanne I: Stalemate
"International efforts at the end of 1948 and during the first half of 1949 to solve the refugee problem proceeded along two crisscrossing avenues – one, as conducted by agencies of the United Nations, primarily the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC), and the other, as conducted by the Great Powers, meaning, primarily, the United States. Both sets of efforts were guided in large measure by Bernadotte’s testament, the interim report of mid-September 1948, and its ‘doctrinal’ postulate that the right of the refugee to return to his home and land was absolute and should be recognised by all parties. This postulate was enshrined two months after the Mediator’s death in UN General Assembly Resolution 194, of 11 December 1948. The resolution stated that ‘the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date’. (The resolution also offered those ‘choosing not to return’ the alternative of ‘compensation’.) The PCC, set up by the resolution, was instructed to facilitate the ‘repatriation’ of those wishing to return.
The absolute nature of the return provision was immediately and al- most universally qualified, in the minds of Western observers, by the appreciation that Israel would not allow a mass return and that many refugees might not wish to return to live under Jewish rule. It was understood by the powers, and by Bernadotte himself already from late summer 1948, that the bulk of the refugees would not be repatriated. The solution to the problem, therefore, would have to rest mainly on organised ‘resettlement’ in areas and countries outside Israel, a matter vaguely addressed in Resolution 194."
"Israeli Foreign Ministry Director General Eytan shortly afterwards wrote in the same vein to Claude de Boisanger, the French chairman of the PCC:
The war that was fought in Palestine was bitter and destructive, and it would be doing the refugees a disservice to let them persist in the belief that if they returned, they would find their homes or shops or fields intact. In certain cases, it would be difficult for them even to identify the sites upon which their villages once stood."
"But the Arab states refused to absorb the refugees. Over the second half of 1948, the Arabs united in thrusting the refugee problem to the top of the agenda. They demanded repatriation and linked all progress towards a resolution of the conflict to Israeli agreement to a return. United Nations and United States efforts to organise Israeli–Arab peace talks were dashed on the rocks of Arab insistence on, and Israeli resistance to, a return. Arab policy on this score was bolstered by a genuine economic inability to properly absorb hundreds of thousands of refugees and by fear of the refugees as a major potential subversive element vis-a-vis their own regimes. The western governments, fed by alarmed diplomats in the field and fired by global Cold War concerns, concurred that the masses of disgruntled refugees were potential tools of Communism and posed a threat to the pro-western host governments.
The Arab states appeared to be in a no-lose situation. Israeli refusal to take back the refugees, leaving them in misery, would turn world opinion and perhaps western governments against the Jewish State on humanitarian grounds. Israeli agreement to take back all or many of the refugees would result in the political and demographic destabilisation of the Jewish State, with clear military implications. All of Israel’s leaders appreciated this: The refugees had become a ‘political weapon against the Jews’. 3
But conversely, for Tel Aviv, the refugees also constituted a political tool by means of which Israel might prise peace and recognition out of a reluctant, rejectionist Arab world. As the months passed and the prospects of peace grew increasingly dim, Israel hesitantly brandished the refugees as a carrot in the multilateral negotiations. (Indeed, Israel had little else, save hard-won territory, to offer in exchange for peace.) Tel Aviv would accept back a small number of refugees if the Arabs agreed to direct negotiations leading to peace."
"J. Rives Childs thought – independently, but along the same lines as Israel’s leaders – that resettlement of the refugees ‘principally in Iraq and possibly Syria’ would be the best solution. 6
But the Arab states refused to absorb the exiles. The impasse pushed the United States and the PCC towards a solution based on Arab agreement to absorb, with western aid, most of the refugees coupled with Israeli agreement to the repatriation of the remaining several hundred thousand.
From the first Ambassador McDonald and Burdett thought Israeli agreement to such a massive (if still partial) repatriation unlikely, if not in- conceivable. Moreover, Burdett doubted, given Israel’s major economic problems, whether Tel Aviv would agree to pay the refugees substantial compensation. Politically, security in the region would best be served by refugee resettlement in the Arab countries, principally in the Arab-held parts of Palestine and in Transjordan.
Since the US has supported the establishment of a Jewish State, it should insist on a homogeneous one which will have the best possible chance of stability. Return of the refugees would create a continuing ‘minority prob- lem’ and form a constant temptation both for uprisings and intervention by neighbouring Arab states,
he wrote. But he acknowledged that, in the absence of organised, systematic absorption and resettlement in the Arab countries, the refugees represented a subversive ‘opportunity’ on which the USSR ‘may capitalize’. 7"
"Mark Ethridge, the Southern Baptist appointed by Truman to the PCC, quickly understood that the developing impasse over the refugees was lethal to any possibility of peace. Ethridge thought Shertok’s attitude – that the refugees were ‘essentially unassimilable’ in Israel and should all be resettled in the Arab world – ‘inhuman’. Israel’s views in this context,
he said, were ‘similar to those which I heard Hitler express in Germany in 1933. It [sic] might be described as anti-Semitism toward the Arabs.’ At the same time, he believed that ‘it might be wise in long run to resettle greater portion Arab refugees in neighbouring Arab states’. 8
Ethridge, like everyone attuned to the Arab position, soon realised that the refugee problem was the ‘immediate key to peace negotiations if not to peace’ itself. The Arab states were united around the proposition that a start to the solution of the refugee problem must precede meaningful negotiations for a settlement. The outlines of a compromise were clear: The Arabs, Ethridge felt, had to reduce their demand for complete repatriation and Israel had to abandon its opposition to a substantial partial repatriation. Both sides were treating the refugees ‘as [a] political pawn’. By the end of February 1949, Ethridge felt that there was need of ‘a generous Israeli gesture’ – that is, a statement agreeing to a return of a large number of refugees and an immediate start to repatriation. This would break the ‘Arab psychosis’ and enable movement towards a compromise. (This assumed sincere Arab interest in a compromise that included the continued existence of the Jewish State.) Ethridge asked the State Department to ‘encourage’ Israel to make the gesture and the Arabs to respond favourably. The idea of a redemptive Israeli ‘gesture’ as the key to peace was to characterise all Ethridge’s work on the PCC during the frustrating weeks ahead."
"On 14 March, Shertok wrote Ethridge that while the main solution to the refugee problem must rest on resettlement in the Arab countries, Israel might, under certain circumstances, admit a ‘certain proportion’, though this would depend on the ‘kind of peace’ that emerged. But Ethridge sought a precise and public commitment. Six weeks of PCC efforts had failed to elicit any concrete concessions. Ethridge pressed Washington to ‘urge’ Tel Aviv to make the required ‘gesture’. 9
Sharett (Shertok) put it bluntly at a meeting with Acheson in Washington on 22 March: The Israeli government ‘could not possibly make such a commitment’ before negotiations began and, in any case, ‘it was out of the question to consider the possibility of repatriation of any substantial numbers of the refugees’. 10 The Arabs, for their part, appear to have insisted, at the Arab League foreign ministers’ meeting with the PCC in Beirut the day before, on the refugees’ ‘right of return’ – while continuing to reject the UN partition resolution of 1947 and recognition of Israel. 11"
"The joint communication on 29 March from Ethridge and George McGhee, Special Assistant to Acheson, appears to have been decisive with Truman and the Secretary of State..., the two officials concluded that Israel must be pressed to repatriate at least ‘250,000’, from the areas conquered by the IDF outside the Jewish State partition borders. The rest of the refugees, it was implied, should be resettled in the Arab countries. 12
Washington was fired into action. McDonald ‘informally’ pressed that Israel agree to take back the 250,000 from the conquered areas. 13 On 5 April, Acheson and Sharett met in New York. Acheson performed with unwonted bluntness, deploying the ‘big gun’ of presidential displeasure. Truman, he said, was greatly concerned about the plight of the refugees, who numbered, he said, some ‘800,000’."
"Sharett requested that the three (Weitz, Danin, Lifshitz)
prepare an absolutely secret plan for the event that the Cabinet feels itself compelled to agree to a return of part of the refugees to Israel. This plan must determine the maximal dimensions of the return . . . the method of selecting the returnees and . . . the areas and villages that can be resettled.
A plan was apparently prepared. 15
Ben-Gurion himself hinted at a new-fangled flexibility at his meeting with the PCC in Tel Aviv on 7 April. He said: ‘. . . it is desirable that the refugees be resettled in the Arab states. But I do not discount the possibility that we might contribute [to the solution] by settling part of them in our [country].’ But Ben-Gurion denied ‘emphatically that Israel had expelled the Arabs . . . The State of Israel expelled nobody and will never do it’, he said. PCC chairman de Boisanger seemed to agree, noting that ‘no Arab maintained [before the PCC] that he had been expelled from the country. The refugees said they had fled from fear, because of the preparations for war, as thousands fled from France in 1940.’"
"Vague statements about a readiness to repatriate some of the refugees served the practical purpose of parrying PCC–American pressures. But the Yishuv’s desire to take back refugees had in no way increased; if it depended on Tel Aviv, there would be no returnees.
Meanwhile, the PCC was affected by growing gloom. In late March and early April, de Boisanger, Ethridge and Huseyin Cait Yalcin, the Turkish PCC representative, concluded that their Middle East shuttle was fruitless. Yalcin, ‘disgruntled’ chiefly with the United States, explained it this way:
Nobody was strong enough or sufficiently determined to deter the Jews from doing anything they wanted to do . . . [US] diplomatists and officials seemed [not] to have the courage to tell the truth about the Jews unless they were within sight of retirement.
Yalcin added that before joining the PCC, he had ‘always had a soft spot for the Jews . . . a universally oppressed people’. Now, according to his British interlocutor, he was ‘definitely anti-Semitic’. 17"
"The PCC took two steps to try to break the logjam: It set up a Technical Committee on Refugees to work out ‘measures . . . for the implementation of the provisions of the [11 December 1948 UN] resolution’, meaning to find out how many refugees there were, how many wished to be repatriated and how many to stay in Arab countries, and how these could be economically ‘rehabilitated’; and called an international conference at Lausanne where, under PCC chairmanship, the parties could discuss the range of issues – refugees, Jerusalem, borders, recognition – and hammer out a comprehensive peace settlement. 18"
"Israel’s policy-makers met to define the country’s positions. The meetings were attended by Ben-Gurion, Sharett, Yadin, Eytan (who was to head the delegation to Lausanne), members of the Transfer Committee, and other senior officials, including Sasson, who was to be Eytan’s second in command. The refugee problem received scant attention, few of the participants anticipating that the Arab delegations intended to push it immediately to the top of the agenda...Kohn advised that the delegation stress the security threat which a mass return would pose and cited the Sudeten problem as a telling and useful comparison: ‘Now that the exodus of the Arabs from our country has taken place, what moral right have those who fully endorsed the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia to demand that we readmit these Arabs?’ 19"
"The upshot of the consultative meetings in Tel Aviv was a reiteration of the traditional line – no substantial repatriation, no ‘gesture’ and no statement on the number of returnees Israel might be willing to take back within the framework of a settlement. 20
The lack of movement in the Israeli position was brought home to Ethridge at a meeting with Ben-Gurion in Tiberias (which, in his cable, Ethridge called ‘Siberias’) on 18 April. Ben-Gurion treated Ethridge to an extended analysis of British misdemeanours in the Middle East since 1917 and to a lecture on how the United States ‘should declare its second independence of [the] British Foreign Office’. On the refugees, Ben-Gurion gave not an inch. He made no mention of a possible Israeli ‘gesture’. Resettlement in the Arab countries was the ‘only logical answer’, he said. Israel ‘cannot and will not accept return Arab refugees to Israeli territory’, on grounds both of security and economics. Israel, said Ben-Gurion, would compensate the refugee fellahin for their land, would provide advice on resettlement in the Arab countries and would allow back a few refugees within the family reunion scheme.
The meeting appropriately crowned the months of fruitless PCC shuttling. Ethridge rushed off a cable to Acheson asking to be relieved of his post. The PCC could not solve the refugee problem, he wrote; only American pressure could facilitate a solution. He did not look to the prospective meeting at Lausanne with great hope. 21
Ethridge’s resignation threat elicited a reaffirmation of the American position favouring substantial repatriation and a plea by the Secretary of State and the President that he soldier on, at least for a while longer. Acheson wrote that the United States Government ‘is not disposed to change policy because of Israeli intransigence’; Truman wrote that he was ‘rather disgruntled with the manner in which the Jews are approaching the refugee problem’. Truman and Acheson both personally pressed Israeli officials at the end of April to soften its stance. 22 Ethridge agreed to stay on, probably hoping that at Lausanne the United States would at last bring its full weight to bear on Israel."
"The delegations gathered at Lausanne at the end of April. But the PCC’s effort to bring the parties to formal face-to-face negotiations failed; the Arabs refused (though Arab and Jewish officials met often and secretly for informal discussions). The refugees represented the major, initial and insuperable sticking point.
The Arab delegations arrived united in the demand that Israel declare acceptance of the principle of repatriation before they would agree to negotiate peace. Eytan, in response, mouthed only a pious plea for the refugees’ ‘permanent settlement and rehabilitation’. The Israeli delegation, he said, had ‘come prepared to tackle [the refugee problem] with sincerity and above all in the spirit of realism’. ‘Realism’ meant no repatriation.
Privately, however, Eytan acknowledged that Israel’s opening positions were inadequate. He wrote Sharett:
I think the time has come for us to realise that mere words will not carry us much further towards peace . . . A statement such as that which I issued [at the press conference] this afternoon is interpreted by everyone as yet another attempt by us to shirk the real issues."
"Through the spring and summer, Israel and Jordan conducted parallel, direct peace negotiations. Sharett met King Abdullah on 5 May 1949. They discussed borders, recognition, access for Jordan to the Mediterranean and refugees. Amman linked the refugee and territorial questions: The more occupied territory Israel would be willing to cede, the more refugees Jordan would be willing to absorb and resettle. Abdullah was primarily interested in Lydda and Ramle, but Israel was unwilling to give up territory. Indeed, it sought further land (Tulkarm and Qalqilya). Nothing came of the talks though, in Tel Aviv’s view, the Jordanians were ‘most anxious’ to make peace. 26
At the same time, Sasson held informal talks at Lausanne with a Palestinian refugee delegation, headed by Muhammad Nimr al Hawari, the Jaffa lawyer who had commanded the Najjada. Hawari proposed that Israel agree to the repatriation of 400,000, who would live in peace with Israel and act as a ‘peace bridge’ between Israel and the Arab states. On the other hand, he argued, if the masses of refugees continued to live stateless and impoverished along Israel’s borders, they would cause the Jewish State nothing but grief. This – not a return – was precisely what the Mufti and Abdullah wanted, argued Hawari. The Arab states did not want the refugees and would not assimilate them. Nothing came of the talks. Hawari returned to Ramallah, ‘desperate and depressed’. 27"
"Whether by Israeli design or American misunderstanding and wishful thinking (or, as is probable, by an admixture of the two), while things at Lausanne were at a standstill, Israeli diplomats in the United States signalled a more moderate line. Abba Eban, Israel’s representative to the United Nations, on 5 May told the United Nations Ad Hoc Political Committee at Lake Success that Israel ‘does not reject’ the principle of repatriation. 29
Eagerly awaiting such a sign of flexibility on this cardinal issue, United States policy-makers jumped for joy. Acheson took Eban to mean that Israel had formally accepted the principle of repatriation, and cabled as much to all and sundry. 30 Eliahu Elath, the Israeli Ambassador to Washington, provided further grounds for optimism by telling the Americans that Israel feels that ‘both repatriation and resettlement are required for solution of problem’. But the Israelis refused to talk numbers. Acheson believed that Israel would be more specific after it was assured that the Arabs would integrate the remainder of the refugees and that ‘outside’ financial assistance for such resettlement would be vouchsafed. 31
But, of course, Israel had not accepted the principle of repatriation, whatever its emissaries were hinting or were understood to have said. But for weeks thereafter, American policy-makers referred to Israel’s acceptance of the principle of repatriation. Israeli officials, such as Eban, found this amusing – and advantageous to Israel. 32 This proved to be only a temporary semi-comic interlude. In truth, apart from fleeting moments of self-delusion, American policymakers understood that Israel remained set against repatriation and that this was a major obstacle to progress. "
"Sharett responded in Ben-Gurion’s name that Washington had ‘mis- understood’ Israel’s position. Israel had accepted the principle of a negotiated peace embedded in Resolution 194. But the Arabs had refused to negotiate in good faith – indeed, even to meet the Israelis or to negotiate peace....
The economic, demographic and social conditions in Palestine had meanwhile changed: ‘. . . The wheel of history cannot be turned back . . . Israel cannot in the name of humanitarianism be driven to commit suicide’, though it was willing to assist in the refugees’ resettlement elsewhere, to provide compensation and to ‘reunite families separated by the war . . . So long as the Arab states do not evince any readiness even to discuss peace, any significant measure of repatriation is clearly impracticable.’ 34"
" Ethridge, according to Eytan, had remained ‘fair-minded enough’ to see that the Arabs were being ‘unrealistic’ over repatriation. But, to achieve ‘immediate peace’, Israel had to agree to repatriate 200,000 refugees and to give the Arabs ‘part of the Southern Negev’, Ethridge felt, according to Eytan. 35"
"Through June and early July, the policymakers in Tel Aviv agonised, understanding that continued blanket stonewalling would inevitably lead to the collapse of the conference, with Israel possibly figuring as chief culprit. The refugee problem ‘seems in many ways to have become now the central problem of our foreign affairs’, wrote Teddy Kollek, one of Ben-Gurion’s aides. (He was in London, trying, among other things, to interest British businessmen, including Sir Marcus Sieff, in financing development projects in the Middle East that could employ Palestinian refugees.) Kollek urged Tel Aviv to take ‘positive action’, by which he may have meant that Israel should agree to a limited mea- sure of repatriation. 36 The problem was to find a concession or ‘gesture’ whose implementation could cause Israel least damage while sufficing to relieve or reduce American and PCC pressure and to transfer the ball to the Arab court. The solution adopted was the ‘100,000 Offer’."
The Gaza Plan interlude
"Simply and initially, the plan was that the Gaza Strip – occupied by the Egyptian army since May 1948 – should be transferred to Israeli sovereignty along with its relatively large local and refugee populations. While gaining a strategic piece of real estate, Israel would thus be considered to have done its bit for refugee repatriation. In most American and British readings of the plan, the refugees in the Strip, after the transfer, were to be allowed to return to their towns and villages of origin. In a revised version, Israel, in addition to absorbing the Strip’s populations, was expected to give either Egypt or Jordan (or both) territorial compensation for the Strip, probably in the southern Negev. Discussion of the plan, even after all hope of its implementation had vanished, continued through the summer, playing a counterpoint to the American and PCC main efforts to induce Israel to agree to substantial ‘front door’ repatriation and the Arabs, to organised refugee resettlement in their own countries."
" the Strip’s 200,000–250,000 refugees, whom Egypt did not want to absorb and Israel refused to take back, constituted a giant burden for the Egyptian authorities. Was holding onto the Strip worth the candle?
By March, according to Israeli officials, the Egyptians thought not. Sasson, who was in constant touch with them in Paris, believed that Egypt wanted to evacuate the Strip. Sharett feared that Egypt would try to transfer the Strip to the Jordanians. Mapai Knesset Member David Hocohen suggested that it would be worth Israel’s while to take over the area, even if it meant enlarging the State’s Arab minority. Sharett, while mindful of the price, thought that Israel would gain a strategic piece of real estate and ‘could portray the absorption of 100,000 [sic] refugees as a major contribution . . . to the solution of the refugee problem as a whole and to free itself once and for all of UN pressure in this regard’. 37"
"The idea was formally debated in the consultative meetings in April in preparation for Lausanne. On 12 April, Sasson said that there were in the Strip altogether some ‘140,000’ Arabs; the mooted figure of ‘240,000’ was an exaggeration.
... No decision was taken. Ethridge, reporting from Jerusalem on 13 April, thought that Israel would not take the Strip – which, he said, contained ‘230,000’ refugees and ‘100,000’ locals – if it meant absorbing its entire population. But, as Ethridge learned a few days later, Ben-Gurion quite clearly favoured Israeli absorption of the Strip, with (and despite) its population. Ben-Gurion even seems to have suggested that the Gaza refugees would be allowed to return to their original villages. 39
The idea of the Gaza Plan meshed with the peace plan then being secretly negotiated with Abdullah. Abdullah stressed Jordan’s need for an outlet to the sea via Gaza or Acre. The transfer by Egypt – unfriendly to Jordan – of the Strip to Israel could facilitate the conclusion of a deal which included Jordanian access to the Mediterranean through Gaza, though there was a school of thought in Tel Aviv that opposed ‘conspiring’ with Abdullah against Egypt. 40
Matters were clarified somewhat on 22 April at the last consultative meeting before Lausanne. Sasson, eager to conclude a deal with Abdullah, backed the transfer of the Strip to Jordan. Ben-Gurion cautioned against rushing into a decision, but Shiloah rejoined that the matter would surely be raised in the impending negotiations. Ben-Gurion responded that if the Strip was transferred to Israel, ‘we would not refuse [it], and then of course we would take it with all its inhabitants. We will not expel them.’ But Shiloah, unlike Sasson, was worried that Egypt might agree to transfer Gaza to Jordan in a deal against which Israel would be powerless. Shiloah opposed such a transfer because – if the West Bank was eventually linked to the Strip by a land corridor, as Jordan was demanding – it would ‘sever’ the Negev from the rest of Israel. Sharett argued that the war had made the Yishuv’s leaders think too much in terms of territory and too little in terms of population: ‘We are drunk with victory [and] territorial conquests.’ He opposed having to ‘swallow 150,000’ Arabs and argued against both Israeli incorporation of and joint Israeli–Egyptian condominium over the Strip. The moment Israel became responsible, the Strip’s refugees would press to be allowed to return to their original homes. Lifshitz, of the Transfer Committee, also opposed Israeli incorporation though pressed for Israeli annexation of Qalqilya and Tulkarm, which had ‘only 20,000 Arabs’. Like Shiloah, Sharett opposed a Jordanian takeover of the Strip. 41
Ethridge was enthusiastic about the Gaza idea, which he began calling a ‘plan’. He saw it as a ‘back door’ method of achieving a measure of repatriation and of getting the Lausanne peace ball rolling. Ethridge told Eytan that he was
sure the Egyptians did not want to keep it and he personally was in favour of giving it to Israel . . . [if] the refugees went with it. He felt that by accepting those refugees, estimated at 150–200,000, [Israel] would be making [its] contribution towards the solution of the refugee problem. 42"
"But were the Egyptians amenable? An initial indication was provided in early May. Egypt would rather give the Strip to Israel than to Jordan, said a Jordanian official in Lausanne. But it was more likely that Egypt would prefer to hold onto the Strip ‘and give it to nobody’. 43
A cable on 2 May from Eytan to Tel Aviv brought matters to a head. The Cabinet met the next day and decided that ‘if the incorporation of the Gaza district into Israel with all its population is proposed, our response will be positive’. Sharett had argued against, saying that Israel had not ‘matured sufficiently to absorb three hundred thousand Arabs. I see it as a catastrophe [ani ro’eh zot ke’sho’ah].’ But Ben-Gurion, mobilising geo-political and strategic arguments, brought the majority around. In the vote, Sharett abstained. 44 On 20 May, after informing Ethridge that Israel would ‘demand’ the Strip but would not press the demand ‘if Egypt said no’, Israel formally proposed to the PCC that she be given the Strip and said that ‘[we] would be prepared to accept . . . all Arabs at present located in the Gaza area, whether inhabitants or refugees, as citizens of Israel’. Tel Aviv committed itself to their ‘resettlement and rehabilitation’, reiterating the proposal on 29 and 31 May. 45
Israel felt that by accepting Gaza’s local and refugee populations, as well as a handful of refugees under the family reunion scheme – coupled with its existing Arab citizens – it would have an Arab minority roughly equal in number to the Arab minority it would have had under the 1947 UN partition scheme and it ‘would have discharged its full obligation’ towards solving the refugee problem. ‘The proposal is an earnest of the great lengths to which the Government of Israel is prepared to go in helping to solve the problem that is central to all our discussions’, Eytan wrote de Boisanger. Israel linked acceptance of Gaza and its refugees to large-scale international aid to cover the entailed costs. 46
But from Washington’s perspective, which took account of projected Arab sensibilities, the plan could not be so simple as mere Israeli incorporation of the Strip. While the United States regarded the refugee problem and its potential solution as the ‘overriding factor in determining eventual disposition Gaza Strip’, Washington was prepared to ap- prove the incorporation only if achieved with full Egyptian consent ‘and provided [that] territorial compensation [is] made to Egypt . . . if Egypt desires such compensation’. Washington added that Israel would have to provide iron-clad assurances and guarantees that the Gaza locals and refugees would enjoy full rights and protection; the fear was of a repeat ‘Faluja’. There was also chariness in Washington about footing the Gaza refugees’ resettlement bill.
The feeling of the United States Embassy in Cairo was that the Egyptian Government ‘might well be willing [to] cede [the] Gaza Strip’ if Israel ‘assumed refugee burden’ and that Arab League Secretary General ‘Azzam was similarly minded. But the Egyptians, the embassy felt, would probably ‘reserve final decision’ until formal peace negotiations took place, using Gaza as a ‘bargaining point’. 47"
"The Israeli Government had given only scant publicity to its decision to incorporate the Strip with its population. The Cabinet feared a strong public reaction against the plan, especially from the Right. The plan had been approved only reluctantly and under the mistaken belief that the Strip contained substantially fewer than 200,000–250,000 refugees. 49 The lack of a positive Egyptian response after 20 May had further eaten away at Israeli enthusiasm.
The official caginess about Israel’s acceptance of the plan stretched to covering the plan’s origin, which was to become the focus of a minor, and somewhat bizarre, diplomatic scuffle.
...The dispute about the origin of the plan was not motivated by a pen- chant for accuracy so much as by political calculation. Egypt, having just lost a war with Israel, could not allow itself to appear eager or willing tcede the only chunk of Palestine it had won to the Jews while helping them get off the hook on the refugee issue. Israel, for reasons of internal unity and diplomacy, could neither appear as the fount of the idea nor overeager to lay its hands on the Strip, lest its eagerness put off the Egyptians. Moreover, Israeli conception of, or eagerness about, the plan implied that Israel was willing and able to absorb some 200,000–250,000 refugees. If the plan fell through, American and United Nations pressure for a ‘gesture’ of repatriation could be expected to be renewed, citing Israel’s eagerness and expressed ability to take in a large number of refugees. (This, indeed, happened.) "
"The American linkage of an Egyptian cession of the Strip to territorial compensation in the Negev (possibly at the northern end of the Gulf of ‘Aqaba) was not manifest in the early multilateral contacts on the matter. Its appearance in late May or early June probably owed much to the seeming Egyptian disinterest in the original proposal and, possibly, also to British signals favouring Israeli–Egyptian ‘reciprocity’, stemming from an imperial interest in obtaining a land-bridge between the British-ruled Suez Canal and Jordan–Iraq, where British troops were stationed and which were linked by defence treaties to London. 52 The United States concurred with the British view that it was in the West’s interests to maintain a territorially continuous Arab world, with a land-bridge across the Negev between Egypt and Jordan.
From the start, Cairo opposed the Gaza Plan: In the circumstances, it implied a separate peace with Israel. ‘Not only would Egypt not give up the Gaza district but [it] would firmly demand the southern Negev’, the Egyptian delegation head at Lausanne, ‘Abd al Mun‘im Mustafa, told Sasson on 1 June.53 ‘The Egyptian Government’, Cairo told Washington a few days later, ‘regarded the proposal as “cheap barter.” [The Egyptian ambassador to Washington] characterised the offer as that of exchanging human lives for territory.’ Or, as Arab representatives put it to a British official at Lausanne, ‘it is wrong to bargain territory against refugees’, and that if the Israelis wanted the Strip, they should compensate the Arabs in kind (that is, with territory). 54
Egypt’s lack of enthusiasm did not kill the plan, if only because it was the only thing on the market in May and June. Taking stock of the Egyptian response, Ben-Gurion agreed, on 6 June, to compensate Egypt with a similarly sized strip of territory along the border in the northwestern Negev. But Ben-Gurion ‘doubted whether this proposal would win the Arabs’ heart’."
"In July, during the Lausanne recess, the Eastern Department of the Foreign Office, at the behest of Bevin, formulated a revised plan for a comprehensive settlement in which the Gaza Plan figured as a prominent element; it included the idea of compensation. Britain thought a breakthrough over Gaza essential if Lausanne was to succeed: Israel would get the Strip if it compensated ‘the Arabs’ with territory and if ‘safeguards’ were instituted concerning Israel’s future treatment of the Gaza refugees, including allowing them to return to their original homes.
Britain interwove in the plan the original Israeli core with other ideas for a territorial–political solution then floating about at Lausanne. The thrust of the British plan was to assure the interests of its Hashemite client State, Jordan, rather than of Egypt: ‘If the . . . compensation . . . were to be in the form of the award to Jordan or Jordan and Egypt of part or whole of the Southern Negev, thus providing a land bridge between Egypt and Jordan’, Israel must receive freedom of access to the Red Sea. The Arabs, similarly, must receive access to the Mediterranean through ‘Gaza and Haifa’, stated the plan. ‘If another solution were adopted for the Southern Negev, there should nonetheless be guaranteed freedom of communication and access across it between Egypt and Jordan.’"
"Acheson agreed to the bulk of the British proposal. The State Department understood that territorial ‘land communication’ between Jordan and Egypt was of major importance to the Arab states and agreed both to the partition of Jerusalem and the desirability of the incorporation of ‘Arab [eastern] Palestine in Jordan’... the Arab world needed territorial continuity; a ‘wedge’ in the form of a completely Jewish-held Negev would make for ‘eternal friction’ in the region."
"What had started as a limited Israeli initiative had become a comprehensive, joint Anglo–American d ´emarche. The two western powers separately but simultaneously approached the Egyptian government with the proposal. The American charg ´e d’affaires, Jefferson Patterson, felt that if ‘suitable’ territorial compensation were offered, ‘the Egyptians might be able to get away with it’. The Egyptian forces in the Strip, he said, were ‘rather jittery’ and felt strategically exposed and isolated, and ‘this might dispose them to get rid of the strip against territorial compensation’. And Cairo did not want the refugees.
But the Egyptians took an obstreperous tack. The Egyptian Prime Minister, while complaining of the refugee burden, reacted ‘with some bitterness to the US proposal for cession of the Gaza Strip to Israel’. 64 At Lausanne, the Egyptians said they ‘could not discuss Gaza proposal. Showed complete indifference fate Gaza refugees who were international and Jewish responsibility.’ In Cairo, the Egyptians denounced the plan as a ‘forerunner of Israeli aggression against Gaza and Arabs expressed surprise US should “lend itself” to such schemes’. The Egyptians questioned America’s impartiality and Patterson gained the impression that if the United States continued ‘to play up merits of Gaza Plan, which are invisible to Arab eyes, Egypt may begin regard US as accomplice of Israeli aggression’. Egypt officially rejected the plan on 29 July. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry contended that the plan could serve only the interests of Israel, which was ‘making use’ of the refugee question to extend its boundaries. The Egyptians ignored the offer of territorial compensation and asserted the refugees’ right of return. 65
By July, Israel was having deep second thoughts about the plan, and not only because of the compensation element. Officially, Tel Aviv remained willing to go through with it, as initially conceived – incorporation in ‘exchange’ for agreement to absorb the Strip’s population. But over the months, the sceptics had gained the upper hand. Israel had agreed to the territory–population trade-off, explained Sharett, in the belief that the Strip contained ‘150–180,000 Arabs’. But this ‘assumption . . . turned out to be incorrect’. Israel now believed there were some 211,000 refugees and 65,000 locals in the Strip; it could not absorb such a total. Also, Israel feared that other refugees, now in Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan, would move to the Strip before its incorporation in the hope of using it as a springboard from which to return to their homes. Israel, he said, must specify the maximum number of Arabs it was willing to take back with the Strip; otherwise, in practice, the commitment would be open-ended. In early August, Sharett, Ben-Gurion, Kaplan and Lifshitz met and decided on a ‘200,000’ ceiling. Israeli diplomats were instructed to ‘mention’ in conversation that Israel would not take back ‘an unlimited number’ of Gaza refugees. 66
As to territorial compensation, Sharett instructed his diplomats to ‘vigorously’ reject the idea. But he added:
If things reach a practical stage and it appears necessary to abandon the completely rejectionist stance, it would be possible to discuss border corrections/changes in the northern Negev, both in the east and in the west, that is, in favour of both Transjordan and Egypt, but on no account [will we be willing to discuss] any concession [i.e., cession] in the southern part of the Negev, including Eilat.
(Eytan, incidentally, objected to this. He argued in favour of a cession in the southern Negev, if it brought peace with Egypt, and dismissed Eilat’s
strategic importance.) Sharett thought that Israel might have to decide whether to agree to take the full ‘300,000’ Arabs in Gaza in ‘exchange’ for the Strip but without making any territorial compensation, or to agree to take part of the Strip’s population and to make territorial compensation. In the end, thought Sharett, perhaps the status quo in Gaza was best left as it was. 67
American and Israeli officials continued to discuss the plan through July. But for all practical purposes, it had died with the Egyptian veto."
The PCC and Lausanne II: The '100,000 Offer' and the collapse of the talks
"Lausanne dragged on unpromisingly as the bright hope of the Gaza Plan rapidly faded. The Americans stepped up their demand for a ‘gesture’, Israel’s readiness to incorporate the Strip, indeed, being cited in support.
US Government greatly disturbed over present Israeli attitude refugee question . . . This attitude . . . difficult [to] reconcile with Gaza Strip proposal, which represents firm admission on part [of] Israel [of] its ability [to] assume responsibility 230,000 refugees plus 80,000 normal residents area.
If Israel was able and willing to absorb the 300,000 Arabs of Gaza, how could it argue an inability and unwillingness to take in a smaller number outside the context of the Gaza Plan? 71
Ethridge, retiring from the fray, primarily blamed Israel for the Lausanne impasse. Tel Aviv was ‘steadfastly’ refusing to make concessions. Ethridge took a high moral tone:
Israel was a state created upon an ethical concept and should rest upon an ethical base. Her attitude toward refugees is morally reprehensible and politically short-sighted. She has no security that does not rest in friendliness with her neighbours."
"Israel’s position, according to Israeli diplomats in the United States, was also affecting American public opinion, until then solidly pro-Israel. The Israel Consul General in New York, Arthur Lourie, transmitted a copy of a letter from American journalist Drew Pearson, which Lourie said ‘expressed . . . anxieties . . . characteristic of a large section of American opinion on whose support we have hitherto been able to count’. Pearson had written that ‘in preventing Arab refugees from returning to their native land, the Jews may be subject to the same kind of criticism for which I and others have criticised intolerant Gentiles . . . Now we have a situation in which the Jews have done to others what Hitler, in a sense, did to them!’ 73 Eban on 22 June assessed that the impasse was leading to a major rupture in Israeli–American relations:
We face crisis not comparable previous occasions. Careful attempt being made alienate President from us nearer success than ever before, owing humanitarian aspect refugee situation and his firm belief gesture our part is necessary condition persuade Arabs [to agree to] resettlement and Congress vote funds. We may have face choice between some compromise principle non-return before peace and far-reaching rift USA. 74"
"Sasson’s assessment of the situation in Lausanne did not differ greatly from Ethridge’s. Sasson wrote, in mid-June, that he was sorry he had come. The city was beautiful, the climate temperate, the hotel (the Beau Rivage) luxurious. But the delegation had come to make peace and, after two months, had advanced ‘not one step’ towards its goal. Moreover, he wrote, ‘there is no chance of such progress in the future even if we decide to sit in Lausanne for several more months . . . The Lausanne talks are fruitless and are destined to fail.’
Sasson explained – and his order of priorities is worth noting – that:
Firstly, the Jews believe that it is possible to achieve peace without [paying] any price, maximal or minimal. They want to achieve (a) Arab surrender of all the areas occupied today by Israel, (b) Arab agreement to absorb all the refugees in the neighbouring [Arab] states, (c) Arab agreement to rectification of the present frontiers in the centre, south and Jerusalem area in favour of Israel only . . . etc., etc.
The refugees, wrote Sasson, had become
a scapegoat. No one pays attention to them, no one listens to their demands, explanations and suggestions. But . . . all use their problem for purposes which have almost no connection to the aspirations of the refugees themselves.
For example, while all the Arab states demanded the refugees’ repatriation, in practice none of them, ‘save Lebanon’, wanted this. Jordan and Syria wanted to hold on to their refugees in order to receive inter- national relief aid; the Egyptians wanted the problem to remain in order to destabilise Jordan and Israel.
Nor was Israel concerned about the refugees, he wrote. Israel was ‘determined not to accept them back . . . come hell or high water’. Sasson himself believed that, in essence, this attitude was correct but thought that Israel should demonstrate flexibility and statesmanship by favourably considering a proposal brought to him by the refugees’ representatives at Lausanne, which called for Israeli annexation of the Gaza Strip and the area now known as the ‘West Bank’, while granting these territories autonomy and absorbing in Israel proper 100,000 refugees. Sasson felt that such a plan could achieve for Israel the complete withdrawal from Palestine of the Arab armies and the ‘complete resolution of the Palestine question’, and possibly also hasten peace between Israel and the Arab states. 75"
"The intense American and PCC pressure on Israel over the early summer bore minor fruit in the form of the ‘Family Reunion Programme’, announced by Sharett in the Knesset on 15 June. Israel would ‘consider favourably’ requests by Israeli Arab citizens to allow back ‘their wives and young children’ – meaning ‘sons below the age of 15 and unmarried daughters’. Israel proposed that special posts be set up on the frontiers with Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon (no armistice agreement had yet been signed with Syria) through which the reunions could be accomplished.
Israeli officials widely described and trumpeted the scheme as a ‘broad measure easing the lot of Arab families disrupted as a result of the war’. But, in fact, the scheme eased the lot of only a handful of families. During the following months, according to Israel Foreign Ministry figures, 1,329 requests were received pertaining to 3,957 refugees. Tel Aviv issued 3,113 entry permits. By 20 September 1951, a total of 1,965 refugees had made use of the permits and returned to Israeli territory. 76
If meant as a sop to the United States and the PCC and as a means of neutralising western pressure for repatriation, the family reunion scheme was not a major success. 77 The United States and the PCC wanted a grand ‘gesture’, not a trickle of returnees.
... The seeds of such a ‘gesture’ had long been hibernating in the soil of Tel Aviv. Already in August 1948, Sasson had recommended that Israel consider allowing a return of ‘40–50,000’ refugees and to start repatriating them ‘immediately.’ (He said he sought to neutralise the expected pressure on Israel at the impending meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in Paris.)79 In mid-April 1949, with America demanding that Israel agree to repatriate 250,000, Sasson implied that Israel could perhaps take back ‘150,000’. 80
Until summer 1949, Sasson’s advice had been consistently rejected. But by late June, the cumulative pressure was proving irresistible. Sharett enjoined Ben-Gurion to agree to publicly declare that Israel would accept ‘25,000’ refugees through the reunion scheme. Moreover, Sharett informed Eban on 25 June, ‘am weighing whether [to] urge Government [to] agree [that we] should add 50,000 as further maximum contribution without Gaza . . . Will this pacify U.S.[,] turn scales our favour?’
On 5 July, Sharett proposed to the Cabinet that Israel publicly declare its readiness to absorb ‘100,000’ refugees in exchange for peace. This number, he said, would include the ‘25,000’ refugees who had already returned to the country illegally and some ‘10,000’ who would re- turn within the family reunion scheme. Most of the ministers supported Sharett. But Ben-Gurion objected, arguing that the number would not mollify Washington or satisfy the Arabs. He also argued, on security grounds, against re-absorbing so large a number. Agriculture Minister Dov Yosef was more adamant: ‘I oppose the return of even a single refugee.’ Sharett, who did not want to push through a major decision opposed by the Prime Minister and fellow Mapai stalwarts, then proposed, by way of compromise, that the Cabinet merely authorise him to sound out the Americans as to whether an Israeli announcement of readiness to take back 100,000 would indeed reduce or neutralise the pressure on Tel Aviv. The ministers agreed, and Sharett was empowered to make the 100,000 offer if, indeed, the feelers to Washington resulted in an encouraging response. 82
The Israeli leadership had concluded that there must be some ‘give’ if Israeli–American relations were not to be strained to the breaking point. Sharett later explained the Cabinet’s vote thus:
The attempt to resurrect the Lausanne Conference is necessary also because of the urgent need to ease the tension which has been created between us and the United States. This tension has surfaced especially [over] the refugee problem, whose non-solution serves as an obstacle in the whole [Lausanne] negotiation. 83"
"During the following days, the State Department and White House were indirectly, and then directly, sounded out on the prospective announcement of readiness to take back 100,000 refugees. The United States was first informed on 15 July of Israel’s decision in principle to let back a specific number. Ambassador McDonald had already heard that the Cabinet ‘was toying with the idea of an offer of 100,000’. 84
... The Israeli feelers about the ‘100,000 Offer’ met with a mixed reception in Washington. Eban’s impression on 8 July was that the ‘100,000’ announcement ‘would have very deep impression’, to judge from a talk with McGhee and Hare. But Andrew Cordier, a senior aide to the United Nations Secretary General, reported that the Americans regarded the ‘figure [as] too low’. 86 On 26 July, Acheson reiterated the American demand that Israel absorb some 250,000 – bringing its Arab population up to 400,000, or roughly the number of Arabs who would have lived in the Jewish State under the 1947 partition plan. 87
But President Truman’s was the decisive reaction. John Hilldring, a Truman aide, reported after a conversation with the President on 18 July that Truman was ‘extremely pleased . . . thinks 100,000 offer may break deadlock’. 88
The United States was officially informed on 28 July of Israel’s readiness to take back 100,000 refugees after there was an overall refugee resettlement plan and after there was ‘evidence’ of ‘real progress’ towards a peace settlement. Elath said that day that Israel had taken the decision in order ‘to demonstrate [its] cooperation with the U.S.’ and to contribute its share to a solution of the refugee problem, and ‘in spite of the fact that Israeli security and economic experts had considered the proposed decision as disastrous’. Elath said the figure included ‘infiltrees’ already inside Israel as well as those returning through the reunion scheme. Sharett, informing McDonald, stressed that 100,000 was the limit, bringing Israel’s Arab minority ‘far beyond margin of safety by all known security standards’. 89
The State Department did not immediately react to the ‘100,000 Offer’. Perhaps Acheson wanted to see how the Arabs would react. And, as perhaps anticipated, the Arabs immediately and flatly rejected the offer. But, unofficially, some Arab officials at Lausanne now hinted at a willingness to accept less than full repatriation. Israel, they said, should take back ‘340,000’ refugees from the conquered territories (outside the partition borders), and repatriate another ‘100,000’ from inside partition plan Israel. The Arab states, with international aid, would then absorb the remaining ‘410,000’. 90"
Internal debate in Israel
"Meanwhile, the publication of the ‘100,000 Offer’ caused a major political explosion in Tel Aviv. There was enormous opposition to it within Mapai. Hapo‘el Hamizrahi, the General Zionists and Herut all vigorously opposed the offer.
The Progressives were silent, and the press interpreted their silence as a silent protest . . . Mapam’s acknowledgement in weak language of the justice of the act . . . was buried and blurred completely in the wave of rage in which the government was swept for surrendering to ‘imperialist pressure’,
Sharett reported.
Eban felt that the offer ‘represents a very considerable effort in advance of public opinion in [Israel].’ Acheson’s view was similar: ‘Israel . . . has allowed public opinion to develop . . . to such an extent that it is almost impossible for [the] Israeli Government to make substantial concessions re refugees and territory.’ 91
A major debate took place in Mapai on 28 July. The party’s Knesset faction leader, Meir Grabovsky (Argov), put the case against the offer succinctly: ‘No one wanted . . . and anticipated that the Arabs would leave’, he said. But events produced a ‘more or less homogeneous [Jewish] state, and now to double the number of Arabs without any certain recompense . . . [should be seen] as one of the fatal mistakes destroying the security of the state . . . We will face a Fifth Column.’ Israel would have a minority problem like that ‘in the Balkans’."
"The internal Mapai debate continued on 1 August (just before the Knesset plenum debated the offer). Opposition was bitter. As Knesset Member Assaf Vilkomitz (‘Ami) put it, ‘there will be too large an Arab minority’. Knesset Member Shlomo Lavi (Levkovich) called the offer ‘a grave mistake’. Knesset Member Eliahu Carmeli (Lulu) said that bringing back the refugees would create ‘not a Fifth but a First Column. I am not willing to take back even one Arab, not even one goy [i.e., non-Jew]. I want the Jewish state to be wholly Jewish.’ Moshe Dayan’s father, Knesset Member Shmuel Dayan, another Mapai old-timer, opposed any return, ‘even in exchange for peace. What will this formal peace give us?’ Knesset Member Ze’ev Herring argued that allowing back ‘100,000’ would generate further pressure and waves of returnees.
... Sharett announced that while there would be no Knesset vote on the offer, the Government ‘should be interested in being attacked in the Knesset on this question . . . It is important that the uneasiness of the Mapai members in this matter be expressed.’ Sharett’s thinking was clear: The more widespread and vicious the internal opposition, the easier it would be for Israel to ‘sell’ to the United States and the PCC the offer as final and as ‘the limit of possible concession’. And, indeed, Sharett instructed his diplomats in this vein: To play up the Government’s difficulties in selling the offer to the parties and the public. 100,000, clearly, was the absolute ceiling. 93 In the noisy Knesset plenum debate that followed, Sharett assured the members that the offer would not be binding except as part of a general peace settlement.
‘It must be [made] clear to Paul Porter [Ethridge’s successor as United States representative on the PCC] that anything further cannot be dreamed of . . . Explain to Porter’, Sharett cabled the new head of the Israeli delegation to Lausanne, Reuven Shiloah, ‘that our proposal generated grave opposition internally, including in Mapai, and we only with difficulty in a five-hour debate succeeded in calming the storm in the faction . . . Any further concession will destroy the Government’s standing.’ Sharett added that if the Arabs failed to ‘latch onto’ the Israeli offer immediately, pressure would surface, which the Cabinet would be unable to withstand, to withdraw it. The proposal was being made on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis. Sharett suggested that the United States counsel the Arabs to take it. He repeatedly referred to the mood of the Israeli public. 94
Sharett believed that the storm over the offer had ‘slightly undermined’ his personal political standing but that it had helped to ‘sell’ the proposal abroad. In any case, he tended to believe that the Lausanne talks would collapse, in which event the ‘100,000 Offer’ would never have to be implemented. 95
Needless to say, the Arab rejection of the ‘100,000 Offer’ did not overly displease Israel. In general, its leaders were not unhappy with the no-war, no-peace situation. In mid-July, Ben-Gurion described Eban’s thinking thus:
He sees no need to run after peace. An armistice is sufficient for us; if we run after peace – the Arabs will demand of us a price – [in the coin of] borders [i.e., border rectification] or refugees or both. We will [i.e., can afford to] wait a few years."
"Israel formally informed the PCC of its readiness to take back ‘100,000’ refugees on 3 August, making it conditional on ‘retaining all present territory’ and on the freedom to resettle the returnees where it saw fit. The PCC, considering the offer ‘unsatisfactory’, informally transmitted it to the Arab delegations. The Arabs reacted as expected. One Arab diplomat told Porter the offer was a ‘mere propaganda scheme and [the] Jews [are] either at your feet or [at your] throat’. The offer was rejected as ‘less than token’. "
"Burdett, like the Arabs at Lausanne, immediately dismissed the proposal, along with the family reunion scheme, as a ‘sham’ designed to frustrate American and United Nations efforts to get Israel to agree to more substantial repatriation. He believed that ‘in large part’, the Knes- set debate and the press campaign against the ‘100,000’ were geared to foreign consumption. The American Embassy in Tel Aviv, on the other hand, stressed the ‘genuineness’ of the internal opposition to the offer. It explained:
Conditioned by a long build-up in the Hebrew press, in the Knesset and by Government leaders themselves, which had as its theme the utter un- desirability of taking back any Arab refugees whatsoever, the people of this country were hardly prepared for a reversal in policy.
No Israeli, ‘from Prime Minister down wishes see single Arab brought back if can possibly be avoided’. 98
The United States did not think that the Israeli offer ‘provide[d] suitable basis for contributing to solution of Arab refugee question’. The offer was ‘not satisfactory’, Acheson wrote. 99
But Israel was immovable; 100,000 was the ceiling. By mid-August, all the participants understood that Lausanne had failed. Even Shiloah was ‘worried [and] tense’. Sharett reassured him that the Israeli offer had ‘vastly improved’ Israel’s ‘tactical position vis-a-vis UN and Arabs.’ But Shiloah, like Eytan and Sasson before him, knew that Lausanne was going nowhere. The Arab rejection of the Gaza Plan and of the ‘100,000 Offer’ and Israel’s rejection of complete repatriation and withdrawal to the partition plan borders left, in Acheson’s phrase, ‘no real basis for conciliation’. By the end of August, it was all over. The participants raised their hands, having achieved nothing, and indefinitely suspended the conference. The delegations returned home in September. The PCC continued to churn out reports on the Palestine refugee problem into the 1950s. 100"
McGhee Plan
"But meanwhile, in August 1949, the PCC and the United States made one last more or less coordinated effort. Politics had clearly failed. So they tried an indirect approach, economics. The upshot was Washington’s ‘McGhee Plan’ and the PCC’s Economic Survey Mission. Both were geared to finding an economic solution to the refugee problem. The American policymakers focused on a grand economic development scheme for the Middle East, a regional Marshall Plan, which would bring the Arab states into the American orbit against the backdrop of the Cold War, push these states forward economically and, possibly, solve the refugee problem by well-funded, organised resettlement in the Arab states. The scheme was known as the ‘McGhee Plan’.
Meanwhile, the Technical Committee on Refugees, created by the PCC on 14 June 1949 to report on the scope and nature of the refugee problem, on 20 August submitted its findings. The committee found that there were ‘711,000’ bona fide refugees, and that the higher number of international relief recipients (totalling close to one million) was the result of ‘duplication of ration cards’ and the inclusion ‘of persons who, although not displaced, are destitute’. It recommended that a thorough census be conducted. The committee found that an ‘overwhelming’ number of refugees wished to return to their homes but that Israel was blocking repatriation. The committee opined that ‘the clock cannot be turned back’, especially in view of the increase of the Yishuv by ‘50 per cent’ since the Palestinian exodus; immigrants were pouring into Israel at the rate of ‘800 a day’. The committee surveyed employment possibilities and mooted regional development projects of benefit to the refugees. 101
Even before the Technical Committee’s report was in, the PCC and the United States set in motion the creation of the Economic Survey Mission (ESM), whose focus was regional development projects that could employ the refugees. The ESM, headed by Gordon Clapp, was formally set up on 23 August, as (like the Technical Committee) a subsidiary body of the PCC under Resolution 194. Washington understood that the projects’ funding would be mainly American and the underlying assumption was a solution based on resettlement in the Arab countries rather than repatriation. 102 The ESM, based in Beirut, began touring the region in mid-September and presented an interim report to the PCC and General Assembly in December.
... As time passed, the status quo and Arab and Israeli policies hardened and calcified. The mass influx of immigrants into Israel steadily obviated any possibility of mass refugee repatriation. Only the destruction of the Jewish State and the death or expulsion of its population could have made a mass refugee return physically possible. From the Arab side, resettlement in the Arab countries remained through the years a clear possibility, though one requiring a vast amount of Western capital. But the Arab states objected to such resettlement mainly for political reasons. They regarded repatriation as the ‘just’ solution and, incidentally, as one that could help undermine the Jewish State, to whose continued existence they objected. The Arab states were also eager to be rid of the refugee burden for internal reasons, fearing the refugees’ potential as a restive Fifth Column. Meanwhile, while Israel blocked repatriation, the refugees’ presence and misery served as a useful political weapon against Israel.
In retrospect, it appeared that at Lausanne was lost the best and perhaps only chance for a solution of the refugee problem, if not for the achievement of a comprehensive Middle East settlement. But the basic incompatibility of the initial starting positions and the unwillingness of the two sides to move, and to move quickly, towards a compromise – born of Arab rejectionism and a deep feeling of humiliation, and of Israeli drunkenness with victory and physical needs determined largely by the Jewish refugee influx – doomed the ‘conference’ from the start. American pressure on both sides, lacking a sharp, determined cutting edge, failed to budge sufficiently either Jew or Arab. The ‘100,000 Offer’ was a classic of too little, too late. The Gaza Plan, given Egypt’s defeat in the war, the just-ended territorial expansion of the Jewish State and Egyptian–Jordanian rivalries, was a nonstarter; Egypt alone may have agreed to it, but not as part of an Arab coalition generally guided by its most extreme constituents (the key to Arab political group dynamics)."