Indianapolis Star · Indianapolis, Indiana · 11 August 2000
CP-2000-001
Arafat rejected $30 billion for refugee relocation, aide says
By Ibrahim Barzak, The Associated Press, Gaza City
Transcribed from the clipping
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rejected an American plan to set up a $30 billion international fund to resettle refugees, a top Palestinian official said Thursday. Salim Zanoun, chairman of the PLO Central Council, said the offer came during last month’s summit at the Camp David presidential retreat outside Washington.
He said it was part of American pressure on Arafat to compromise on the refugee issue. The Palestinians are demanding that millions of refugees be allowed to return to their former homes in what is now Israel. Rejecting the offer, Arafat ‘told the Americans that the issue of refugees is non-negotiable,’ Zanoun said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declined to comment. Israel is willing to allow a few thousand Palestinian refugees to be reunited with their families in Israel. The others would settle in a Palestinian state or in countries where they now live. Palestinians fled during the 1948 war that followed Israel’s creation.
They were confined to refugee camps in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, where many still live with their descendants. Some of the camps came under Israeli control in 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”
Context added by this archive
Attributed to an aide. The headline is the refusal; what was being refused — resettlement in a Palestinian state or in the countries where the refugees now live — is further down the column.
Cite this clipping
"Arafat rejected $30 billion for refugee relocation, aide says," Indianapolis Star, 11 August 2000, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2000-001. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2000-001
This clipping is read closely in the section below
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Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2000-001.
Read in: No partner for peace, and the answer printed beside it
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