UN Trying to Resettle 830,000 Arab Refugees

But Opposition Rampant

Ernie Hill, Special Press Correspondent, United Nations

UN Trying to Resettle 830,000 Arab Refugees — Press & Sun-Bulletin, 25 June 1952 — Press & Sun-Bulletin · Binghamton, New York · 25 June 1952

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“United Nations — The director of the United Nations agency trying to resettle Arab refugees claims that ‘better days are ahead for the 830,000 unhappy, dislocated people’ chased out of what now is Israel. In a press conference before returning to the Middle East, John P.

Blandford, director of the UN Relief and Works Agency, claimed that the first houses were being built, vocations taught and sites for towns staked out in the $250,000,000 program. Blandford, a former United States housing expert and ambassador, is remarkable in that he refuses to become discouraged by the Arab populations which tell him the program is doomed to failure.

Won’t Resign. His organization hounded by Arab newspapers, Blandford stands almost alone in the conviction that the refugees will move into towns and housing developments and get off the UN charity rolls if they are assured the move in no way prejudices their political rights to return to what used to be Palestine.

Blandford denied the rumor printed in the Middle East that he had returned here to resign. ‘I am optimistic,’ says Blandford. ‘If I were not, I could not go on with this job.’ Arab newspaper reporters heckle the UNRWA director in his press conferences but he refuses to become angry or annoyed.

‘Isn’t it true,’ asked Abed Bouhofa of Cairo’s Al Misri, ‘that you are trying to bribe or blackmail the Arab countries into resettling the refugees with promises of money for projects?’

Implore Living Conditions. ‘Those are your words, not mine,’ said Blandford. ‘It is true that some projects could be available for those countries that show a humanitarian approach to helping with the refugees.’ Blandford refuses to use the words ‘resettle’ or ‘reintegrate.’

He claims that UNRWA is only trying to ‘improve living conditions and help the refugees become self-supporting.’ The main trouble in the Arab refugee camps is that thousands are convinced that if they take regular jobs they will never get a chance to return to their homes in Israel.

Technically, they are waiting for Israel and the Arab states to complete a peace agreement, settle boundary disputes and allow them to return to their homes now occupied by Jews. The refugees have been told recently that they will never be allowed to return but most of them refuse to believe it.

Convince Governments. Blandford’s job is to convince the governments involved that they should set aside land on which the UN can build villages and resettle the refugees. The director says that a plan to irrigate the Jordan valley and to spend $11,000,000 on vocational training should take care of 100,000 of the 450,000 refugees in Jordan.

It is hoped that 300,000 can be moved to Syria and Iraq. There are only 80,000 refugees in Syria and projects under contemplation could absorb them quickly. Iraq has only a handful. The 200,000 in the Gaza strip which is administered by Egypt provide the most difficult problem.”

Context added by this archive

A U.N. official refusing to use the words resettle or reintegrate, and an Egyptian newspaperman named in the story asking him whether the agency is bribing Arab governments. The paper writes “chased out of what now is Israel” in its own voice, in the first sentence.

Cite this clipping

"UN Trying to Resettle 830,000 Arab Refugees," Press & Sun-Bulletin, 25 June 1952, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1952-002. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1952-002

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34 years of plans to settle them in someone else’s country