The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
Shakespeare "Romeo And Juliet" Act V, Scene III
I propose a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict/ problem based on the Marshal Plan used in post WWII Europe and the creation of a Confederation between the Palestinian controlled areas of the “West Bank” and Jordan as it was during the Period of 1948 -1967. Though painful this plan is to the Arab side it is the right and only humanitarian solution to end the conflict. The reactionary Arab’s constant refusal to accept the State of Israel as a Jewish state an entity in the Middle East is a forgone conclusion and for the long suffering of the Palestinian refugees there should be a resolution as predetermined in UNR194 Article 9 to absorb them as Israel did for the Jews that were made refugees in post WWII Europe and from the Arab countries of the Middle East.
UNR194 Article 9:
"Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible."
My proposal is based on that put forward in the late 1930’s, by US President Franklin D Roosevelt, on the absorption and resettlement of the stateless and homeless Palestinian refugees just as Israel did for the Jewish refugees. All six Arab countries that were then represented at the UN and voted against UNR194; Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen, and were active participants to the conflict in question.Should lead the way in resolving the issue by each absorbing the Palestinians as fellow citizens as stipulated in UNR194 Article 9.
The plan encompasses a two step solution.
Step One:
Those Palestinian refugees within the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip should be offered a comprehensive resettlement and financial package in return for a long term peace based on a total cessation of conflict and a forgoing of their “right of return”.
Step Two:
As to the Palestinians that have lived in squalid stateless refugee camps throughout the region, in those states that have confined them there, should be allowed two choices. Either to stay and be absorbed into their adoptive countries as full citizens or they should be allowed free passage to “return” to the lands of the Palestinian Authority. If they do so chose this option they should be included in the comprehensive resettlement and financial package.
Those adoptive countries which welcome the refugees as full citizens should be enticed to do so with incentives and financial compensation. Those Arab countries that refuse should be severe penalized and should face punitive actions.
As to the Jewish settlers on the West Bank they should be offered the choice to become “law-abiding” citizens of the Palestinian State or withdrawal. The same will be said for Arab citizens of Israel who wish to leave Israeli territory.
Mutual assistance in the re-education of the population from that of war, religious intolerance and terror must be encouraged. Should one of the countries in the region fail to comply to the re-education and to co-existence in peace than that body should face world wide condemnation, boycott and cessation of all assistance.
Additionally any state which threatens the existence of another state or should propose genocide should be met with the fullest enforcement of the entire UN body under Article 2 of the UN Charter with a total economic embargo and if necessitated by a full scale military operation of all parties concerned for world peace.
Additionally a proposal should be made to the Egyptians to forgive her national debt in return for a ceding of parts of northern Sinai to the Palestinian Authority or for the resettlement of stateless Palestinians wishing for land to live on there.
The same could be said for the resettlement of Palestinians in the sparsely inhabited eastern regions of Jordan. In order to make this decision feasible than those Arab countries willing to participate should adopt Israel’s Development Town settlement plan used in it’s resettlement of the displaced Jews in the 1950’s. This plan based on collective farming villages inhabited by those Palestinians who have farming skills, will be given assistance to build homes as well as basic essentials to begin their farms.
Needless to say that those who accept the resettlement plan will be given title “Tabo” to the land and full citizenship. Those Palestinian refugees with small business skills and occupations who wish to resettle in the “Development Towns” of these areas will be given apartments and financial aid to begin small businesses as well as long term loans.
What was the Source for my plan.
My plan is not new nor was it never contemplated before. The thirty-second President of the United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who held this office for an unprecedented thirteen years until his death in 1945 also put forth a similar plan BEFORE the decision for Partition of the Mandate was made in November of 1947.
President Roosevelt's interest in transferring Arabs from Palestine began in October 1938 after a meeting with Justice Louis Brandeis. Brandeis reported on this meeting to Felix Frankfurter who in turn passed on the report to Stephen Wise and to presidential advisor and script-writer Ben Cohen. Brandeis pointed out in his report of this meeting how Roosevelt appreciated the significance of Palestine, “the need of keeping it whole and of making it Jewish". He was tremendously interested - and wholly surprised - on learning of the great increase in Arab population since the First World War; and on learning of the plentitude of land for Arabs in Arab countries, about which he made specific inquiries.”
The Historian Zaha Bustami commented that it was, “…difficult to tell who brought up this subject during the meeting, but the information on Arab demography was provided by Frankfurter.” Who had met with FDR a few days earlier a meeting to discuss the Palestine situation; however there are no records of what Roosevelt said at this meeting.
On 25th of October 1938, Roosevelt had a meeting with the British Ambassador to the U.S., Sir Ronald Lindsay. Lindsay wrote that the President was “impressed by the fact that the Arab population had increased by 400,000 since the establishment of the [League Of Nations] Mandate.”
FDR also contemplated the creation of a program of well-digging across the Jordan. Roosevelt firmly believed that, “we ought to be able to find that money for the purpose”. FDR believed that once a large quantity of water would be made available for irrigation and the cultivable land thus created in Trans-Jordanian territory it;
“should be set apart for Arabs from Palestine. They should be offered land free, and that ought to be enough to attract them; and failing the attraction, they should be compelled to emigrate to it. Palestine could thus be relieved of 200,000 Arabs”.
FDR also added that it would “be necessary to prescribe that no Arab should be allowed to immigrate into Palestine, and no Jew into the Arab lands.”
The Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle, later recalled that,” The President was full of Palestine” and that FDR called on Ronald Lindsay to call a conference of Arab princes. FDR was adamant in having them lay down,
“say $200,000,000 buying a farm for every Arab who wishes to leave Palestine, the money chiefly to be used in digging wells, which is perfectly possible in the Hedjaz.” Here, it is quite clear that Roosevelt intended the Arabs to pay for the transfer of the Arabs of Palestine."
British Ambassador Lindsay therefore asked Lancelot Oliphant of the British Foreign Office to have someone prepare a “short answer to this scheme” to have in readiness, although he stressed that he would not take the initiative in sending a reply to the President. Lindsay’s request was first dealt with by Lacy Baggalay of the Foreign Office. He first quoted experts, who held that the possibilities of finding water in quantity by boring in Transjordan were, “quite restricted”. He then continued, “But even assuming that water could be found in large quantities, it is now out of the question that any Arabs should be 'compelled' to emigrate to the lands thus brought into cultivation. "Whatever else may remain uncertain about the problem of Palestine, the impossibility of compulsion on this scale is now beyond dispute."
Oliphant sent a reply to Lindsay saying that the British government would not even contemplate such an idea, and it would be “thoroughly unjust” to compel the Arabs to transfer from Palestine “to make room for immigrants [Jews] of a totally different race who have had no connection with it [Palestine] for at least 2,000 years.” He also brought, in his words, the “fallacy” which Roosevelt was using to try and solve the Palestine problem.
There are those who blame,“the genesis of Roosevelt's idea of a forcible or voluntary eviction of Palestinian Arabs to Trans-Jordan or other neighboring lands" on Roosevelt’s contacts with Zionist circles in the summer of 1938 perhaps in discussions with Brandeis and Frankfurter.” But in truth the "Who" actually had given Roosevelt the idea that irrigation of the Transjordan desert would create a suitable location for the Arab transferees? The indications are that it came from the State Department where at that period Edward Norman was in contact with government officials to advance his own transfer plans. Although Norman was at the time in contact with the State Department, his plans were in fact to irrigate Iraq by means of the dams it had recently constructed.
Roosevelt summoned British Ambassador Lindsay for a further meeting, presumably during the first half of November. At this meeting, the President said that he thought that “the British should call in some of the Arab leaders from Palestine and some of the leaders from the adjoining Arab countries.
"The British should explain to them that they, the Arabs, had within their control large territories ample to sustain their people.” He also pointed out that Jewish immigration to Palestine and Transjordan would not harm the Arabs since there was plenty of room for everyone. Roosevelt then went on to propose transfer of Arabs, “Some of the Arabs on poor land in Palestine could be given much better land in adjoining Arab countries."
British Ambassador Lindsay answered Roosevelt by saying that there was opposition in both the Arab and Moslem world but the President,“belittled this opposition and thought it due largely to British indecision and conflicting policy.” Roosevelt had also thought of ideas of how to finance this transfer. He thought that; “if a plan was devised for a settlement of 100,000 families costing $3,000 a family or $300 million the funds might be raised” by the American Government, the British and French Governments, and private subscriptions - largely Jewish; each of these bodies would contribute $100 million."
Towards the end of December the British Charge d'Affaires in Washington met with Sumner Welles and handed him a memorandum on transfer received from the British Government, adding that Roosevelt would probably be interested in it. After pointing out that the latest available evidence did not bear out the belief that any considerable quantity of water could be obtained in Transjordan at shallow levels by boring wells,the memorandum continued,
“Suggestions have also been made that if the free offer of cultivable land in Transjordan did not suffice to attract the Arabs from Palestine, they might be compelled to emigrate from it, with the object of vacating land in Palestine for settlement by Jews.”
What is not mentioned here in all of this discussion and debate is the background of the rise of Nazi Germany occurring during the years 1933 -1938. During this period the free immigration of the Jews of Europe was of the utmost issue for Jewish circles. The critical period of 1938-1941 was the period of the beginnings of war in Europe. It was also the period of British appeasement to the Arabs of the severe restrictions of Jewish immigration in the White Paper of 1939.
Until the Wannassee conference of January 1942 there was still hope in Jewish/Zionistic circles that the Nazis would allow mass Jewish immigration. With the inevitable invasion of Poland by the Nazis in September 1939 the doors of Europe began to close and the fate of European Jewry was sealed.
The British Government was fearful of the repercussions in Britain, India and the Moslem world if they should back Roosevelt's plan of Arab "resettlement". They saw the threat to the sources of raw materials and oil for the Empire in agreeing to Roosevelt’s proposals. Their Empire would be in jeopardy due to their promises made to the Jews. His Majesty's Government realized that they would be accused of “unjustly trying to force a long-established community to leave its country in order to make room for immigrants of a race which has, in great part, not lived in Palestine for many centuries.” The British Government also felt that the problem of “redistribution of the Arab and Jewish communities in Palestine and across the Jordan”, was not one of finance but rather of politics.On two occasions, Roosevelt raised his plan with British representatives but he was “firmly told that no amount of financial inducement would move the Palestinian Arabs.” Roosevelt however, was unconvinced by this British reply.
Chaim Weizmann had his first meeting with Roosevelt in February 1940. At this meeting, Roosevelt put forward the idea of bribing the Arabs, asking Weizmann “What about the Arabs? Can't that be settled with a little baksheesh?” Weizmann replied that “it wasn't as simple as all that. Of course the Jewish people would compensate the Arabs in a reasonable way for anything they got, but there were other factors appertaining to a settlement.”
In December 1942 two and a half years later, Roosevelt told Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau,
“I actually would put a barbed wire around Palestine, and I would begin to move the Arabs out of Palestine.... I would provide land for the Arabs in some other part of the Middle East.... Each time we move out an Arab we would bring in another Jewish family.... But I don't want to bring in more than they can economically support.... It would be an independent nation just like any other nation.... Naturally, if there are 90 per cent Jews, the Jews would dominate the government.... There are lots of places to which you could move the Arabs. All you have to do is drill a well because there is a large underground water supply, and we can move the Arabs to places where they can really live.” In October 1943, the question of “barbed-wire” around Palestine came up again in a conversation between Roosevelt and Judge Samuel Rosenman, Justice of the New York Supreme Court and speechwriter and counselor to Roosevelt. Roosevelt had spoken of the “possibility of settling the Palestine question by letting the Jews in to the limit that the country will support them - with a barbed-wire fence around the Holy Land.” Rosenman thought that this would work, “if the fence was a two-way one to keep the Jews in and the Arabs out.”
What should be mentioned here is that Roosevelt already knew full well of the Nazi program of mass genocide. He had been informed by Churchill in the Casablanca Conference January 14 to 24, 1943, of the entire text of the Protocols of the Wannassee conference gleaned from the transmission of the file through the Abwehr G312 “Enigma” program at Bletchley Park. Roosevelt had also read the Polish Foreign Minister Count Edward Raczynski's note which had been addressed to the Governments of the United Nations on 10 December 1942 entitled, "The mass extermination of Jews in German occupied Poland", which provided the Allies with the earliest and most accurate accounts of the Holocaust.
In addition to being informed by documents and Intelligence reports during the course of 1943 an officer in the Związek Walki Zbrojnej (abbreviation: ZWZ or Union of Armed Struggle) of the Polish underground, Jan Karski, traveled to Washington as an emissary of the Polish Resistance to meet with President Franklin Roosevelt and report directly to the President on the European conflict and specifically conditions in his own country, Poland.
In 1942 Karski was selected by Cyryl Ratajski, the Polish Government's Delegate at Home, to perform a secret mission to gather information about Nazi atrocities in occupied Poland. In order to gather evidence, Karski met Bund activist Leon Feiner and was twice smuggled by Jewish underground leaders into the Warsaw Ghetto for the purpose of showing him first hand what was happening to the Polish Jews. Karski had visited Bełżec death camp disguised as a Ukrainian camp guard and had gained first hand eyewitness to the extermination of the Jews of Europe. Karski reported to the Polish, British and U.S. governments in 1942 on the situation in Poland and especially on the the extermination of the Jews. He had done so by smuggling out a microfilm with further textual information in German as proof from the Underground Movement on the extermination of European Jews in occupied Poland.
Karski met with Polish politicians in exile including the Polish Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski , as well as members of political parties such as the PPS, SN, SP, SL, Jewish Bund and Poalei Zion. He also spoke to Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary who reported the meeting directly to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in a detailed statement on what Karski had seen in Warsaw and Bełżec. Karski then traveled to the United States to report to President Franklin D.Roosevelt. Roosevelt requested that Karski meet with Justice Frankfurter and Rabbi Stephen Wise, as it would be of vital concern for them to be apprised of the horrors befalling their fellow Jews in Poland. Frankfurter and Wise listened to Karski’s detailed eyewitness accounts from Belzec concentration camp of the program of extermination of the Jewish people carried out by the Nazis.
Karski’s testimony of this conference, with Roosevelt, Frankfurter and Wise was recorded with a theatrical fervor that embodied the shock and the moral challenge that presented Frankfurter with the human inability to "conceive the unconceivable" when told of the methodical extermination of the Jewish people and to recognize what Karski calls ' the unprecedented' extent of the genocide, in an interview titled "The Karski Report” for the 1978 documentary film "Shoah" - "Holocaust", by Claude Lanzmann
At the beginning of November 1944, Roosevelt was elected President for an unprecedented fourth term. A few days later, Roosevelt discussed the Palestine situation with the Under-Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius. After telling Roosevelt of their difficulties regarding Palestine, Stettinius wrote in his diary, that Roosevelt felt confident that he would be able to “iron out” the whole Arab-Jewish issue. “He thinks Palestine should be for the Jews and no Arabs should be in it”, continued Stettinius, “and he has definite ideas on the subject. It should be exclusive Jewish territory.”
Roosevelt developed his ideas for the transfer of the Arabs from Palestine during the last six or seven years of his life through his insight on the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany. Some believe that Roosevelt's views had become more extreme as time progressed as he heard from State Department officials and Military Intelligence reports of the events happening in Eastern Europe against the Jews.Originally recommending the transfer of two hundred thousand Arabs, he eventually stated unequivocally that “Palestine should be for the Jews and no Arabs should be in it.”
Almost all the statements that are quoted on this subject were not written by Roosevelt himself, but by the various people he worked and met with. There are no recordings either. This however, is characteristic of Franklin D. Roosevelt since he was a man who always had one eye cocked on historians who would someday assess his role in history. He tried to cover his historical tracks, using unrecorded telephone conversations and unrecorded private interviews .
The Jewish people wherever they are aspire for peace. For over two thousand years, our people have known discrimination, bigotry, death and destruction with no place to run to.The chief American Zionist leaders at that terrible time Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter and Henry Morgenthau knew that the fate of millions of Jews were at stake. But the world’s apathy and closed doors and most importantly Arab hatred epitomized by the Grand Mufti of “Palestine” Haj Amin Al-Husseini lead to the death of SIX million innocent Jewish lives.
No thinking intelligent individual whether he be Jew or Gentile desires the horrors of death and destruction caused by war and terrorism. Tolerance and the willingness to sit down with one’s former arch enemy for the sake of peace initiated by the late Itzhak Rabin z”l who gave his life in an attempt to bring peace to the Middle East calumniated in the 1993 ‘Oslo Accords’. The quest for peace during the past decade was the keystone of the administrations of former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and even Arik Sharon.
However at every instance the Palestinians have opted for more and more violence.
The tremendous desire for a true peace and an end to the cycle of violence between our two peoples has led Israel to make endless and painful concessions to the Arabs with NOTHING in return.We Israeli’s have evacuated the Sinai and it’s settlements for Peace with Egypt. We also “disengaged” from the Gaza Strip, a step which severely traumatized parts of our people, for no concessions in return other than that the Palestinian people acknowledge our right to exist. It is sadly regrettable that the Palestinian people have continued to react to the Israeli concessions with over 12,000 rockets and mortar rounds.
Recently, the Palestinian Authority's ambassador to the US publicly said. "No Jews should be allowed to live in" any part of a future Palestinian state. If he had said "no Israelis," that would be one thing; however, he excludes all Jews (presumably even the handful of ultra-orthodox Neturai Karta who are anti-Zionist), and thereby reveals the full truth behind the conflict.
The keystone of the new Hamas led Palestinian Government is the denial of the ‘Oslo Accords’and the Iranian policy of the total extermination of the State of Israel and of the Jews within. Their leaders make endless speeches of hatred and there is a total lack of the teaching of tolerant and peace among their youth.
Moderate and “Educated” Arabs as well as those Arab countries who wish to live in a “Just and Lasting “ Peace for the Middle East, need to prove to the Jews of Israel their willingness to enter a new “Golden Age”. All hatred and death must stop now.
Epilogue:
Following the First World War, Emir Feisal, son of Sherif Hussein (Husayn) of Mecca, and the leader of the Arab movement, met in Aqaba with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the head of the Zionist Commission to Palestine. Later, at the Paris Peace Conference, the two negotiated and signed an agreement, which spoke of full cooperation in the development of the independent Arab state in present-day Syria and Iraq (as promised by the British to Feisal) and the Jewish home in Palestine (from the Balfour Declaration), and encouraging "the immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale". The agreement was not carried out, mostly due to the change in Allied policy regarding the Arab State which Feisal had planned to establish.
The two defining articles of the agreement were:
Article I :
The Arab State and "Palestine" (Note: Feisal is referring here to the Jewish State) in all their relations and undertakings shall be controlled by the most cordial goodwill and understanding and to this end Arab and Jewish duly accredited agents shall be established and maintained in the respective territories.
Article IV:
All necessary measures shall be taken to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil. In taking such measures the Arab peasant and tenant farmers shall be protected in their rights and shall be assisted in forwarding their economic development.
Also during the peace conference following World War I, the Emir Feisal exchanged letters with Justice Felix Frankfurter, professing his support for Zionist aims. In the light of later history and the current characterization of the Zionist movement, it is significant that Feisal wrote:
“I hope the Arabs may soon be in a position to make the Jews some return for their kindness. We are working together for a reformed and revived Near East, and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is national and not imperialist. Our movement is national and not imperialist, and there is room in Syria for us both. Indeed I think that neither can be a real success without the other.”
“People less informed and less responsible than our leaders and yours, ignoring the need for co-operation of the Arabs and Zionists have been trying to exploit the local difficulties that must necessarily arise in Palestine in the early stages of our movements. Some of them have, I am afraid, misrepresented your aims to the Arab peasantry, and our aims to the Jewish peasantry, with the result that interested parties have been able to make capital out of what they call our differences.”
These promises above are forgotten by today’s “Moderate” Palestinians Sari Nusseibeh recently wrote: “The Israeli government's current mantra is that the Palestinians must recognize a "Jewish State".”
"[The] Jewish State is the state of the Jewish people … it is a state in which every Jew has the right to return …” former president of the Supreme Court of Israel, Aharon Barak
