Conclusions

Abstract

Across some sixty years of the Palestine refugee problem, statements such as this are common:

The next few months will hold the answer to the questions: are the Arab states willing to face reality, that is, the presence of Israel in their midst, to accept the financial and economic aids offered to them by the Relief and Works Agency and thus to begin to solve the refugee problem? If they do so, they can utilize the refugees to start the slow process of economic and social betterment for which the entire Middle East cries out. If they thus eliminate the use of the refugee problem as a political weapon against Israel and as a bargaining weapon against the West, they will serve their own long-range interests. If, however, they allow unsolved political issues, internal or external, to continue to dominate the refugee problem, they add one more large piece of fuel to the fires of unrest and instability which threaten each government in the Middle East.¹