The Palestine Legacy
Public bickering has never helped towards peace in Palestine; it is only on the spot that local adjustments have from time to time been made in the past three years which have, at least, prevented the situation from breaking out into open violence. But in the past few months the number of frontier incidents affecting Israel and her neighbours has increased, and when the General Assembly of the United Nations came to consider the Palestine legacy.the same old bickering continued along the lame old lines. Various suggestions were made affecting the future of the Conciliation Commission, that it should be enlarged, or abolished, or its headquarters should be transferred to New York. It is difficult to see what advantage there is in any of these suggestions.. However imperfect it may have been, the Commission has provided a number of officers with local experience before whom incidents could be brought without delay, and to alter its composition or location, without giving it greatly increased power, would not be to promote peace. The debates at the General Assembly have brought into sharp relief the gulf which still separates the official policies of Israel and her neighbours. Fear of being branded as traitors, as much as anything else, prevents the Arab Governments from recognising Israel, and the Israel Ministers from granting reasonable compensation to the refugees. It is the refugees themselves who are the victims of this obstinacy. Only a very small fraction of them have been absorbed in the Arab States, either through outside agencies or through their own endeavours. It is better to recognise that there can be no peace before they are resettled than it is to reiterate that they cannot be resettled before there is peace. In arguing that Israel must do all the resettlement the Arab States are crying for the moon, but the Israel Government's stubborn attitude towards paying compensation for the goods, funds and lands of the refugees which are held within Israel would come with a better grace if Israel was not on the point of. claiming $1,500m. compen- sation from Germany for sequestered Jewish property there.
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