WHO ARE THE PALESTINIANS?
Pachter, Henry
For several issues now, Dissent has been printing material on the Middle East situation, among other articles, the dialogue between Amos Oz and Irving Howe in our Spring 1975 issue, Bernard...
...England has admitted West Indians and mestizos whose country had become someone's state...
...these unfortunate victims of national wars as pawns in their own game of power politics...
...But it may lay the foundation of a more constructive relationship between Arabs and Jews on the local level and perhaps bring to old Palestine some kind of unity on the basis of economic interests and businesslike relations...
...Clearly, in all wars of the past, displaced populations did expect to go back to their original places of residence, of work, of personal contacts...
...At some time the British favored the Jews...
...my aim is to establish the fact that the Arab population felt threatened...
...The Jewish defense organizations had taken care to project an image of fierceness...
...Who are they, and who has the right to speak for them...
...The Jewish authorities and public opinion have rejected such proposals on the twofold ground that Israel could not accommodate so many Arabs without disrupting her economy and without endangering the safety of her state...
...Let us also agree that their plight is not of their own making...
...The Jewish state so created was totally unviable: it consisted of three noncontiguous parts encompassing most Jewish settlements and a like number of Arabs...
...rather, Jewish colonists have been guilty of making Arabs jobless and driving them from their lands...
...But the charge that it uses Israel to keep the sheiks docile is totally unfounded and, on the face of it, silly...
...In other words: I propose to depoliticize and deideologize the problem...
...Most Jews may not have approved of terrorism (though my father, usually one of the most law-abiding citizens, did...
...Should the displaced Palestinians have been received by other Arab states...
...even some "dead souls" may have been procreative...
...It is therefore necessary to remember that the United Nations at that time created not one state but two on the west side of the Jordan: one Jewish and one Arab...
...9 In June 1945 the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel, causing 91 deaths...
...How can this be prevented...
...388 HENRY PACHTER not accept...
...will anybody therefore charge that Garibaldi was a tool of British imperialism...
...These are a distinct people, dif392 HENRY PACHTER ferent in background and culture from the Bedouins of Jordan, from the mercantile Lebanese, from the temperamental Syrians and the millenia-old Egyptians...
...Except for states recognized in the Westphalian Peace treaty (1648) and at the Vienna Congress (1815) no other state has received such sanction...
...indicated that they were not taking part in the war operations...
...As the Phoenicians had done at Carthage and the Athenians in Sicily, the Jews acquired land and Jewish colons "settled" it...
...Knowing that in this age everybody is "raising consciousness" or seeking to establish an identity, I charge that there is altogether too much of that in the Middle East...
...But above all, one must divide, not unite, one's enemies...
...From the early 1920s on, therefore, it had launched a campaign "to fight for places to work...
...Aware that I have made some controversial statements, I want to make clear that the issue is neither moral nor judicial, but political...
...The Jewish leaders— except for the Communists, Martin Buber, and some Chalutzim—never thought of allying themselves with these victims of colonization...
...Though the oil sheiks have the means, they feel no obligation to do so.'' Actually, they would rather use "Israel claims that she received a million Oriental Jews, mostly expelled from Arab countries...
...Unfortunately, the symbolic and political value of the object does not depend on its size or price...
...Previously, a unilateral declaration by Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour had designated "Palestine" as a "Jewish homeland...
...where it will eat away the possibilities of peaceful coexistence...
...Yet, for reasons of national policy, the Israeli government seized this opportunity to create a demographically homogeneous Jewish state...
...Third World strategists have made the Palestinians' issue into a cutting edge of their attack on Western positions in world politics...
...On the other hand, a 2In 1922, Colonial Secretary Churchill rejected the interpretation that Arab laws and customs had to be subordinated to Jewish interests, and Arab representatives rejected every constitution the British or the League of Nations tried to impose on the country...
...Jewish settlers, who had naively begun to cultivate this ground (including kibbutzniks who did so in the name of "socialism"), wondered why the former owners or tenants of those grounds were firing at them from afar or staging surprise attacks on 6 A reader points out that the number affected was comparatively small and terrorism was bred mostly in the cities...
...It is certain that no parley is now conceivable without him—a calamity that conforms to the pattern of the Israelis' poor grasp of diplomatic realities: they have always been forced to choose between two evils after they had rejected an alternative that was, after all, second best...
...but they also can be terrorized (this may be the greatest obstacle to peace at the moment) . Mr...
...No one has yet filled his belly by following the Jihad, though WHO ARE THE PALESTINIANS...
...He was not the only Englishman, however, who wondered why the Jews were turning against England, of all nations, which had fought Hitler...
...they can be appeased only by a dramatic reversal in Israeli policy...
...In the beginning, a Palestinian state would probably make obstreperous noises at international gatherings, nor might it in other ways be the most desirable neighbor one would wish to have...
...The Germans expelled from Eastern Europe after World War II have been among the Federal Republic's biggest assets...
...he simply dropped a hot potato that cost EnglandL50 million a year...
...I have used the discredited term deliberately because no other applies...
...By contrast, the return of the occupied territories must be negotiated by Israel herself with her neighbors, and the return of the refugees can be negotiated only privately between the Israeli government and those private parties who claim to be residents of the area now under that government's jurisdiction...
...To him, as to many Arabs and blacks today, Zionism is the imperialists' base in the Middle East...
...Now, when we talk of Palestinians we mean both the refugees in the camps of 1948 and the million Arabs who live under military authorities in conquered territory...
...But it strikes me that his terrorism has so far not made him a hero to his people...
...Can Israel wager her security on the vague prospect that one day the Palestinians might not only awaken but also mature...
...their tactics appalled even Ben Gurion...
...The crimes that had been committed in a few (fortunately very few) places had frightened the Arabs...
...Even Ben Gurion, however, accepted this rump territory because at that time he still assumed that Palestine would remain an economic unit where two peoples would be able to develop in symbiosis—a binational state in all but name...
...White Paper of 1939 also had promised independence to Palestine, but weary of Arab terrorism and immediately prompted by Jewish terrorism, the Labour government decided to abandon the thankless task of policing the peace between Jews and Arabs...
...It is true that Order Wingate trained the Haganah (Jewish underground defense organization) ; but another British officer, Glubb Pasha, led the army of Transjordan...
...389 their innocent children: from the vantage of the expelled Palestinians, the settlers were usurpers, colonizers, imperialists in person, not the tools of mysterious powers across the sea...
...Neither recriminations about the past nor legal constructions of right and wrong are required but political answers to political problems...
...Prompted by Kissinger, it is now making diplomatic gestures— ever so reluctantly—which might have been helpful five years ago but will not now divide Israel's enemies...
...13It seems that Zionism has abandoned its earliest propaganda line saying that a Jewish state would make its Arab citizens happy and contented...
...Gratitude is not a political word, but bitterness is...
...The thought of having Arab citizens in their midst horrifies them...
...The British, in turn, contrary to Lenin's theory of imperialism, did not mean to "exploit" Palestine economically but as the Mandate power forbade the development of Jewish industries...
...Till recently in modem times it was sparsely settled, mostly by Arab Bedouins, and considered part of Syria...
...Most would rather have taken the money, especially if at the same time U.S...
...They are not interested in healing this wound...
...This was the term used abroad...
...Arabs today identify themselves only by speech...
...Northern Syria became a French Mandate...
...And 80 years before these events, Lord Palmerston had sponsored the unification of Italy...
...nowhere else do foreign interests spread so much confusion about the very identity of the people whom they pretend to save...
...does it apply to Zionism...
...At the outbreak of World War II, the population consisted of 456,000 Jews and 1.1 million Moslems...
...The Jewish labor organization, Histadruth, had seen with alarm how fellow Jews were hiring Arab labor at low wages while Jewish immigrants were jobless...
...Even the Palmach, the combat organization of the Haganah, blew up bridges, derailed trains, etc...
...There can be no settlement, no truce and no confidence between Arabs and Jews as long as their status is not determined equitably and as long as there is no international machinery to ascertain the will of the Palestinians themselves...
...3 The deal was consummated by a U.N...
...After prolonged uprisings those parts of Syria that lay east of the Jordan River were given to Hashemite sheiks, who thereafter were called kings...
...Responding to strong pressures from the Zionist organizations (and minding the electoral situation at home), President Truman resolved the problem by agreeing to the foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine...
...when war came to their area, they followed the advice to stay clear of it...
...More than the expellees' actual misery, the bitterness of the sacrifice that was imposed on them intensifies the hate that defines the Palestinians as a nation distinct from other Arabs...
...WHO ARE THE PALESTINIANS...
...Anyway, even supposing that he seeks a settlement with Israel for whatever reasons, Sadat cannot deliver the Palestinians, and most likely no outside power can do that...
...Their appeasement ought to be less difficult than their arousal...
...The terms of the Mandates were illegal even by the standards of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which was their covering law...
...they want it to fester—but in the body of Israel, and in the body of world peace...
...Since the conditions of life as a second-class citizen are not enviable even if the nationalities were not emotionally hostile to each other, I believe that few Palestinians would have opted for return...
...but the land cannot be sold without them, pulling it away from under them...
...but while staring at that danger they don't see the gathering of Arab armies outside the gate...
...Below we continue the discussion with another contribution...
...At that time, only 20 years after the Balfour Declaration, Zionism was still considered a tool of British imperialism, and the Mufti of Jerusalem broadcast for Hitler from Berlin during World War II...
...policies) are tied down in the confrontation patterns of the past decades...
...it cannot be negotiated between the parties concerned...
...Obviously, in terms of Lenin's theory of imperialism, Jewish business has not been guilty of exploiting cheap Arab labor...
...They are still statistics in the camp population, and so are their children, although they may live in other countries...
...but since 1930 they found Zionist presumptions increasingly embarrassing...
...If Israel and Jews in the West would examine their interests rather than their emotional fears and historical memories, they might decide that an approach to the Palestinians offers more chances for a lasting peace than the speculations about Sadat's sincerity...
...Those who wish to debate my proposal should refrain from reminding me who "started it" or who is "more to blame" or whose rights are better...
...Meanwhile, the cancer of the Palestinians continues not only to fester but is being transferred to the world arena, 'Arab notables in the occupied areas are subject to intimidation...
...Much has been made of the Histadruth's job policy...
...A lot of silly arguments have been heard about this catchword...
...I am also aware that the real point of the quarrel is not viability but sovereignty...
...Another was the threat of Jewish mass immigration and the growth of a new power center that was bound to subvert the status quo in the Middle East...
...He has imposed himself on the oil sheiks, but he is not widely admired and acclaimed...
...In suggesting such appeasement, I do not think that it can bring an early cessation of terrorist attacks or a lowering of the level of invective in Arab rhetoric...
...The policy of the oil companies and of the State Department has been consistently pro-Arab unless one defines as pro-Israel any policy not aiming at the destruction of the Jewish state...
...387 but, simultaneously, Weizmann and Lord Harlech assured the Arabs that this should not interfere with Arab aspirations to sovereignty...
...393 admittedly some heads might get filled with drunkenness...
...391 uninhabited desert first and liberation of the bemoaned brothers later...
...He has his little hours of triumph when the Third World forces in international bodies need once more to show their "identity" by voting against the United States on an issue that is guaranteed to be without consequence...
...When the Jewish Agency, aware only of capitalist law, bought land from the callous effendis, it may honestly have thought that thereby it had acquired the right to expel the fellahim...
...subsidies were to be ended...
...See Avishai in Dissent, Spring 1975...
...it is doubly true of the Palestinians because their country happens to lie at the crossroads of a world power struggle...
...Would they agree with the Soviet government that "Soviet values" can be realized better in an environment that does not include Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak, Trotsky...
...They would probably prefer to sever their political ties with Jordan and might be interested in economic arrangements, to mutual advantage, with Israel...
...Not only Jews but Arabs too had come into Palestine, attracted by the higher wages and better working conditions under Jewish employers, or simply by the promise of prosperity that the Jewish immigration and its foreign backers brought to the country...
...10 It was at this moment, and through this deed, that the issue of the "Palestinians" was created...
...The friends of Israel (and surprisingly, that includes those who have valiantly criticized "cold war attitudes" in U.S...
...Some, like Menahem Begin's Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern gang, were outright terrorists...
...There are no alternatives, and one must look for solutions that promise to last...
...In 1930, after serious Arab riots, the immigration rate was severely restricted just when Jews were desperate, not for a homeland but for a place of asylum...
...This repeats the story of the "enclosures," well known to readers of Marx's Capital...
...Far from being used by the Russians or the Americans for their purposes, both Jews and Arabs have deliberately involved their big brothers in their own defense policies...
...they think in terms of security instead of in political terms...
...So, first of all let us agree: like most Irish, most Palestinians are not terrorists...
...The fact that some of those landowners have served on national Arab bodies makes them only more odious to the insurgent peasantry and has rendered it less amenable to the influence of the political leaders as a whole...
...The Palestinians speak Arabic and worship in mosques...
...but Arabs are even less able than Jews to distinguish between factions in the other camp...
...Nor would it be politically acceptable without the Arab part of Jerusalem...
...Indeed, that is a quest of deep concern, and it is in Israel's power to restore that sense of honor...
...As long as they pretend to negotiate about it, they merely indicate that they do not mean to make peace...
...In the long run security lies only in the confidence of one's neighbors...
...Then the British used Arab tribesmen to wrest Palestine, Mesopotamia [Iraq], and Syria from the Turks, promising them "sovereignty" and self-determination...
...I know that the Israelis are loath to give up any part of Jerusalem, and I do not know of any device of condominium or international regime that would make the administration of the city possible without friction...
...But it is in the nature of empires to be drawn into national border conflicts where their clients have interests, and very often they would rather not have to support them...
...For several issues now, Dissent has been printing material on the Middle East situation, among other articles, the dialogue between Amos Oz and Irving Howe in our Spring 1975 issue, Bernard Avishai's "Zionism: Was It Really Colonialist...
...They should have been given the option of either a settlement in money or return under Israeli law...
...Do these people have a right to complain about terrorism...
...14 At the time of the Six-day War, the Israeli government declared that it would hold the occupied territories only as pawns and evacuate them in return for a peace treaty...
...What these terms meant or how to reconcile them was never spelled out except in Balfour's memoirs, where he wondered how anybody could have been misled into thinking that they meant anything.' But on the evidence of contemporary customs and conditions, the Balfour Declaration was consistent with an immigration rate of 50,000 a year and a ratio of two to one between Moslems and Jews...
...at its end, the census counted 1.143 million Moslems, 583,000 Jews, and 145,000 Christians...
...Do I have to argue that it is possible to condemn both the crime and its attribution to a whole people...
...America has invested heavily in Arab oil developments...
...They gamble on the survival chances of a particular structure of the Israeli state—which is a dangerous gamble at best and is becoming more dangerous every day...
...Soviet diplomacy gladly gave its assent, viewing any diminution of the British Empire as so much gain for itself and hoping to ingratiate itself with both Jews and Arabs...
...There is no doubt that the social-economic upset that emanated from Jewish Palestine was one of the reasons for Arab sheiks, kings, and capitalists to fear the establishment of a Jewish state...
...The offer to receive or to compensate legitimate claimants might be made with greater confidence by the Israeli government if at the same time the Palestinians were to be offered a state of their own...
...Arafat will step into the vacuum and pretend that he knows what the Palestinians want, and he will go on blackmailing his Arab friends and the international community...
...The Jewish state was the aim of a national conquest...
...and their anger and violence are as much directed against the Arab landowners and brokers who have facilitated the sales as against the policy of the mandatory Power under whose aegis the transactions have taken place...
...It has been suggested that the West Bank and the Gaza strip—two noncontinguous territories —would constitute such a state...
...Palestine, the land of the Philistines, a Semitic people that once was subjugated by Joshua and by David, has retained that name through the centuries as it was conquered by Hittites, Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs,' Christians from the West, Osmanli Turks, the British...
...the Hebrew term sounds less offensive...
...They are looking for opportunities—I am even tempted to say that they can be bought...
...In the long run, a Palestinian state of the West Bank might easily fall into Israel's orbit, or become a client of Moscow, Peking, Washington, Teheran—who knows...
...On the other hand, genuine refugees from Palestine left the camps—either through death or because they found lucrative employment in other Arab states...
...Nevertheless, I believe that the nonsatisfied demand for a Palestinian state is now a major source of posturing, gesturing, and confrontation...
...Arafat will speak for the Palestinians as long as they are not allowed to speak for themselves...
...the part west of the Jordan River was styled the British Mandate of Palestine, supposed to evolve toward self-government...
...Ens...
...But the rationale of the Jewish "homeland" conflicts with the suggestion that these should be balanced against the Arab expellees...
...A movement to liberate and unite the Arabs (then under Turkish domination) existed long before the First World War...
...13 The first, part of this rejoinder sounds odd in view of their steady clamor for more immigrants from countries holding more Jews than there are Arab statistics in the camps...
...Originally the term meant conquerors coming from the Peninsula...
...The U.N...
...7 This is the background of the war of 1948, which resulted in Israel's conquest of a contiguous territory (the boundaries of 1948-67), also in the Hashemite annexation of territory west of the Jordan River including part of Jerusalem and such Biblical cities as Bethlehem and Nablus, and finally—and most important for the present purpose—the flight of 600,000 Arabs from their native home.' In the light of the communal strife that had preceded the British pullout, that flight is totally understandable...
...but they have come from many countries and have intermarried with many conquering nations...
...The responsibility for its preservation, as of some other elements of the status quo the U.S...
...By the nature of the problem, this cannot be a problem between Israel and Egypt or Syria, for neither of these countries claims sovereignty in Palestine...
...Even if every single Arab of all Palestine fled, there could not be more than 1.2 million...
...They have too much confidence that the gate can be held closed for all time...
...Rabin finds a partner to hold a dialogue with, he may face another war...
...They must determine their own fate, both in Israel and in the West Bank area...
...394...
...then had 57 members...
...The fraudulent claim that there are 2 million people in those camps is clearly exposed by the census figures of 1946...
...It may not be easy, but unless Mr...
...The Palestinians are neither better off nor worse if Arafat "represents" them in the ILO...
...To blunt that edge we don't have to take drastic measures but we need a radical rethinking of the issue...
...A sensible person avoids being in anybody's firing line, especially in this kind of civil war...
...They became seedbeds of unrest, recruiting grounds for terrorist organizations, breeding places for corruption, blackmail, and crime...
...Zionism exploited British power and then turned against it...
...They would have the right to Israeli citizenship even without being harassed in Bagdad...
...A few cents a day per head—amounting to many million 8 Some say the number was 800,000—more than had been living in the Jewish half of Palestine...
...they have been objects of other peoples' policies for 3,000 years...
...Arafat's threats, much like his predecessor Shukairi's, sound more like blackmail than like fanaticism...
...in the same issue, and N. Gordon Levin's critique of Noam Chomsky in the Summer 1975 issue...
...WHO ARE THE PALESTINIANS...
...The Arab Congress in 1928 demanded a "fully democratic" government—whatever that meant in terms of Arab constitutions...
...Now the name was to mean almost exclusively the million Arabs who claimed that they had been expelled from their homeland and were now forced to live in primitive camps spread outside Israel in the Gaza strip, on the West Bank, in Lebanon, and in Syria...
...They have missed valuable opportunities for peace in the last 10 years...
...These camps were maintained by UNRRA, a United Nations affiliate, and financed mostly by American contributions...
...the second part is refuted by the results of the Six-Day War, which has added another million Arabs to the population of Israel, and many Israelis even speak of a "Greater Isael...
...The ball therefore is in Israel's court...
...It could be negotiated between Israel and a state that can speak in the name of the Palestinians...
...Therefore, the solution for Jerusalem will have to be imposed by the big powers...
...It stands to reason that they would rather not fight Boumedienne's wars and that the skimpy subsidies some of their guerrillas are getting from oil sheiks cannot be substitutes for a development plan and a technology to go with it...
...George Antonius, The Arab Awakening (New York: Capricorn Books, 1965...
...I don't believe that it would be economically viable...
...Security Council resolution, 4 the only instrument of international law on which the State of Israel can base its existence...
...This is true of the Somalis, the Irish, the Bengali, the Ibos...
...this is an illusion for which others have paid dearly...
...Foreword, October 1938) pp...
...By the most conservative statistics, therefore, more than half of the present camp inmates had never been in Israel...
...But of course, in the 30 years that have elapsed, the original 600,000 have been blessed with children and grandchildren...
...The offer should have been based on recognition of legitimate claims by those who could prove that they had lost their property, residence, or job in the present territory of Israel...
...obviously the resolution would not pass today...
...Wherever I have touched upon such questions, my intention has merely been to show how Palestinians see them, and that is a political fact, not a moral judgment...
...Unless a political dialogue is initiated between Israel and responsible Arab leaders—a dialogue about concrete proposals that will satisfy legitimate claims—Mr...
...British soldiers were surreptitiously shot...
...cars loaded with dynamite were driven into British army camps...
...Why do not Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, or rich Kuweit, Algeria, Saudi Arabia help the Palestinian brothers for whom they shed such abundant tears...
...Moreover, no one denies that many Arabs on the West Bank considered the miserable allowance in the camps preferable to their normal subsistence under Arab governments...
...At some point between 1948 and 1968, the United States should have stopped subsidizing the refugee camps and Israel should have made an offer that might have, in one bold stroke, drastically reduced the number of "Palestinians" and disarmed their militancy...
...but like many Ulstermen or Basques, many Palestinians will condone or even applaud acts of terrorism as long as they lack other means to express what they consider their just grievances, and as long as those grievances continue to be seen as just by others...
...States usually are the product of violence...
...But I am not arguing here about the morality of terror...
...its conflict with Arab states or Arab interests is on the order of national rivalries, and this remains true even if Jews or Arabs or both are allied with imperial powers...
...A word about this assumed symbiosis...
...I think most Israelis would keep the occupied areas if they could move the Arabs out, while Arab honor, strangely, demands the return of "Gordon Levin, already quoted, rejects the notion that readmission could "serve [any] real human interests besides a satisfaction of Arab honor...
...This is the original meaning of "colonization.' g Notwithstanding Lenin, it may be called an imperialist policy on the part of the nation that hopes to prevail in such a fight for the land...
...It has offered to pay compensation to those who have lost property in old Palestine (or rather, to allow the United States to make such payments), but it has not given refugees a choice of taking payment or returning...
...9 Obviously, what applies to Arabs must apply to Jews...
...Both these peoples are too primitive in their tribal instincts or too immature as nations to be reasonable on such questions where self-respect is at stake...
...390 HENRY PACHTER dollars a year: that meant an invitation to count many heads twice...
...Besides, a forcible population exchange is repugnant...
...One may hope to prevent an explosion though one may not have removed the dynamite...
...I have to explain here a subtlety of feudal law: fellahim can be sold along with the land on which they have been sitting...
...Despite the prosperity that annexation has brought to them, they are a source of unrest and acute danger to peace...
...He also has rivals: should he not occupy the vacuum, some terrorist group or the Communist party will...
...A decision is urgently needed to attack the root of the evil...
...5 Its strongly nationalistic appeal brought quick success to this campaign, so that by the 1930s Arabs worked for Jews mostly in menial positions that Jewish workers would 'Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin was no "anti-Semite...
...some Israelis think that therefore Arafat is the only available partner...
...10 Unfortunately, socialists like Dissent contributors Bernard Ashivai and N. Gordon Levin, have defended this theft on the ground that "socialist values" can be realized better in a securely Jewish environment...
...Originally the British wanted to build a base in Haifa because—oh irony!—they were about to fulfill another Arab demand: to evacuate the base in Alexandria...
...Their identity is of rather recent origin, through the misfortunes of wars and yet another foreign conquest...
...So far, we have encountered Palestinians as the inhabitants of an area that might include all of the present state of Jordan, or only the population of the Mandate territory...
...In so doing, they "`The revolt is largely manned by the peasantry, that is to say by the people whose life and livelihood are on the soil but who have no say whatever in its disposal...
...Nowhere else do local enmities serve so many outside masters...
...is committed to defend, has been a heavy burden...
...406-407...
...Oppressed nationalities find it difficult to get a hearing because those who pretend to represent them often are political adventurers who merely exploit them—be it for imperialistic purposes of other powers or to vent on imaginary enemies their own hate of the world...
...But the Israelis who justify their claim to the land by their tribal memory of 2,000 years obviously have no argument against people whose claim is based on tribal memories reaching back only 30 years...
...Nevertheless, a sufficient number of Arabs in Palestine prospered, learned mechanical skills, and went to college, so that former Palestinians now occupy enviable positions in all Arab countries as executives, opinion leaders, professional men, foremen, and skilled workers...
...I propose a "solution" that will not last...
...To keep them from returning, to forbid them to choose between staying abroad and accepting conquest, violates custom and international law—in fact it is a crime...
...Aside from the moral and humanitarian outrage they constitute, maintaining these camps was a political mistake of the first order...
...The Holocaust and the war left the Allies a "disposal problem" in Western Europe: nearly 100,000 East European Jews who had been made homeless by persecution and political changes were languishing in displaced-persons camps, fed by charitable contributions and government aid, mostly from the United States (which, however, did not lift its restrictions on immigrants from Eastern Europe...
...hence it would be a pawn in the political game of the oil sheiks...
Vol. 22 • September 1975 • No. 4
