Israeli Assistance To Arab Refugees

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28742, 13 November 1958, Page 6

Israeli Assistance To Arab Refugees

(From a Reuter Correspondent)

JERUSALEM. Moves to improve the lot of some 20.000 Arab repatriated refugees are being made by the Israeli authorities. More than £4,000.000 has been earmarked for the programme to rehabilitate former Arab refugees and displaced persons who have returned to Israel legally since the end of the Palestine war 10 years ago. The beneficiaries of the scheme, mostly repatriates under the family reunion plan dated back to 1948. are to receive land or compensation, as well as housing and easy-term loans for the acquisition of livestock and agricultural machinery. The new Israeli project will leave untouched the larger problem of the estimated 900.000 Palestine Arab refugees, many of whom are still living in camps in Jordan. the Egyptian-held Gaza strip. Syria and Lebanon. Its success, however, would not only improve the condition of 20,000 human beings, but, Israeli officials believe, could also serve as an example of what can be done to alleviate the lot of the other refugees.

The plan announced by the Israeli Minister of Finance, Mr Levi Eshkol, is said also to have been prompted by the desire to remove one of the grievances nursed by Israel’s Arab population—some 200,000 people constituting about 10 per cent, of the total population—against the Government. Offers Refused Officials say that the new plan has become possible only in view of a recent change in the attitude of the repatriated refugees, who for many years bluntly refused offers of resettlement except in the form of restitution of their former lands. The resistance was mainly to offers of land which formerly belonged to Arab refugees now residing in neighbouring Arab countries, officials said. The new rehabilitation plans envisage, as far as possible, the restitution of lands formerly owned by the repatriates. But alternatively they provide for compensaion in the form of other land or fair monetary recompense. As presented to the Parliamentary Finance Committee, the three-point programme provides for:

cl) The establishment of regional public committees made up of both Arab and Jewish farmers to recommend the allocation of fair compensation to be received by persons whose land was acquired by the development authority.

(2) The pledge that for those individuals who earned their livelihood as farmers, compensation will be in form of land, but as far as possible, from land which formerly belonged to them. In cases where the land given as compensation requires improvement the Government will either carry out the work itself or else finance it

(3) When compensation for land is to be paid in cash, the evaluation will no longer be related to prices current in January. 1950. as practised hitherto, but will be according to current prices.

The problem of the repatriated refugees arose after the Palestine war of 1948-49 and is often cited by spokesmen for the Israeli Arabs as an important irritant in

the relation between the Arab minority in Israel and the authorities.

Official figures show that about 35.000 Arab refugees were permitted by the Israeli authorities to enter Israel under the family reunion scheme approved at the time by the United Nations. Israeli Government officials claim that by September, 1952, most of these were resettled and fully reintegrated.

A recent survey carried out by the Government showed that there is no unemployment among the repatriated Arabs, that the farmers among them have been leased Government lands on easy terms and that during the last season 15.000 acres of land were thus leased at very low rents.

But more than half of the repatriates continued to claim land which had either been taken over by the Government’s development authority, or by the Army for security reasons, or had been settled by new Jewish immigrants.

A land acquisition law passed] by the Knesseth in 1953 drew! sharp criticism from spokesmen of the Arab population of Israel.] who claimed that assessments for compensation in cash, arbitrarily decided by Government officials, were too low and that land should be returned to its owners regardless of development or security considerations. Israeli officials reported that extremist nationalists secretly conducted a campaign of threats against acceptance by the repatriates to offers of land which formerly belonged to refugees now abroad. This acceptance would amount to the recognition of the permamency of the present situation and to the abandonment of all hope of Israel’s defeat by the Arab countries. Athe extremists argued. Some change in the attitude of the repatriated refugees was reported by officials following Israel’s ’successful military operations against Egypt in 1956. It was then that the new plans began to take shape and their final form was approved by the Cabinet early this year. The recent announcement revealed that the plans are to be implemented over a period of three to four years.