Palestinian Arab Refugee Problem Unsolved

By Mohamed Mirghani — Editor’s Note: Mohamed Mirghani, managing editor of the Arab News Agency in the Sudan and Khartoum Correspondent of Newsweek Magazine, is here on a State Department exchange program for six weeks at The Patriot Ledger.

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“The United Nations Special Political Committee this week will once more resume its discussions of the problems of the Palestinian Arab refugees living in the various camps in the Middle East under the responsibility of the United Nations.

Thorny Issue. …The overall conflict is a result of the Arab-Israeli war over Palestine in 1948. That war, beside bringing Israel into being, created the long-existing differences among the Arab States which accused each other of being responsible for the loss of war and loss of Palestine… Dr.

Johnson, an American acting for the United Nations, proposed settlement of the conflict through the return of refugees, who wish to do so, to Israel, with Israel giving them full right of citizenship. Others who prefer to stay where they are now in the guest countries of the United Arab Republic, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, Dr.

Johnson suggested, should be taken permanently as citizens of those countries and be treated accordingly… The Jordanian ambassador to the United Nations, Sayed Abdel Moneium El Rifai, who was assigned by the Arabs to convey their views to Dr. Johnson, said: ‘I have told Dr. Johnson that the Arabs not only reject the plan but reject even the idea of considering it.

We still hold to our first position that the solution only remains in the historic United Nations General Assembly resolution sanctioning the right of the Arab refugees to go back to their land and home.’ So, the failure of Dr.

Johnson’s proposals keeps the whole problem unsettled, leaving the unrest and security dangers as they always have been in the Middle East area for the past 12 years…

Sensitive Issue. …no Arab state, politician or individual will dare to express any other view than the absolute right of the Arab refugees to take back the land now occupied by Israel.

I will suggest no solution myself here, other than expressing a hope that the question will be solved, and the sooner the better to release the Middle East from its present existing state of tension.”

Context added by this archive

An Arab journalist, writing under his own name across a full width of an American paper in December 1962, on a State Department exchange. The editor’s note explains who he is and why he is there.

He sets out the American proposal, quotes the Jordanian ambassador rejecting it, says what the Arab states will and will not say in public, and then declines to offer a solution himself. The phrase in the headline is Palestinian Arab refugees — the adjective and the noun together, in 1962, two years before the Palestine Liberation Organization existed.

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"Palestinian Arab Refugee Problem Unsolved," The Patriot Ledger, 6 December 1962. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1962-001. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1962-001