PALESTINE ARAB REFUGEES

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29058, 21 November 1959, Page 18

PALESTINE ARAB REFUGEES

Continued U.N. Aid Urged (NJJ. Prtst Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, November 19. The Indonesian and Indian delegates urged the United Nations to continue assisting the 1,000,000 Palestine Arab refugees pending a final solution of the 11-year-old prob; lem. The mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency is due to expire next June 30. Speakers in the debate so far have agreed that it be extended.

Dr. Ali Sastramidjojo, of Indonesia, said the agency was needed to give the refugees assistance and a “measure of confidence in their uncertain future.” He urged the committee to reaffirm the Assembly’s 1948 resolution calling for the repatriation of the refugees or payment to them by Israel of compensation for the property they left behind when they fled Israel at the height of the Arab-Israeli war.

The Indonesian delegate said' that the proposal put forward in the debate last week by Mr Ahmed Shukairy, of Saudi Arabia, had been received with “great interest” by Indonesia. Mr Shukairy suggested the revival of the three-nation Palestine Conciliation Commission and the granting of permission for frontier villages in Jordan and in Gaza to farm lands on the other side of the armistice demarcation line and the reinstatement of the Bedouin tribes to their land in the southern part of Palestine. Mr C. S. Jha, of India, said extension of the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency seemed inevitable. He said that the United Nations had assumed a certain responsibility for the refugees and it was obvious that it could not now abandon them.