Palestine at Lausanne
Little has been heard of the conference which has been in session at Lausanne for the past month under the auspices of the United Nations Conciliation Commission and which is supposed to be arranging a permanent peace settlement between Israel and her neighbours ; so little, in fact, that Mr. Trygv e Lie has found it necessary to send a special emissary to report to him on its progress. Another visitor to Lausanne, who may help to jog the deliberations on, is Mr. Hare of the State Department, who is to act as American member of the Commission. Mr. Hare has recently completed a tour of the Middle Eastern countries, as a result of which he is sometimes credited with having in his pocket a "new American policy" for that area. This is probably as- much of an exaggeration as it would be to suggest that Sir William Strang of the Foreign Office, who has just been engaged on a similar tour, had evolved a "new policy" for Britain. But there can be no doubt that Mr. Hare's opinions will have considerable weight, and that he will do everything in his power to hasten the work of the conference. So far there has been no settlement of any of the three main points In dispute ; the frontiers of Israel, the fate of the Arab refugees, and the status of Jerusalem. All three problems are to a large extent Interdependent, and the main argument has been about the order in which they should be tackled ; the Jews wishing to settle the
frontiers before discussing the refugees, and the Arabs preferring to see some at least of the refugees returned to their homes in Israel before passing on to any discussion of frontiers. As the Concilia- tion Commission derives its authority from the United Nations, it will presumably have to insist that the starting point for the debate on frontiers should be the partition plan of 1947, from which, for good or evil, the present state of affairs in Palestine has arisen. This plan had many shortcomings, but they were such as should be settled by negotiation and not by force.
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