1968_4_arabisraelwar

UNITED STATES AND UNITED NATIONS / 185
who had crossed into Jordan. Lawrence Michelmore, commissioner-general
of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in
the Near East (UNRWA), stated that more than 100,000 of the persons
who crossed into Jordan were refugees of the 1948 war or their children,
and that about half of them were living in makeshift tent camps on the East
Bank. He repeatedly urged that Israel allow those who wished to do so to
return to the existing camps on the West Bank, where more or less permanent
housing and adequate health and educational facilities existed, especially in
the nearly deserted camps around Jericho.
Israeli representatives replied that the exodus from the West Bank had
been voluntary and based largely on economic, personal, and, in some cases,
political preference. They said it was significant that one-third of the permit
holders had apparently changed their minds and not chosen to return.
Moreover, a steady stream of persons was continuing to leave the West
Bank months after the end of the war—at the rate of 200 to 300 a day—
and that even before the war, when both banks were under Jordanian control,
there was a steady movement to the East Bank and to other neighboring
countries, offering better economic opportunities.
Israeli spokesmen also blamed Jordan for creating the conditions that led
Jerusalem to restrict the number of refugees it was willing to allow to return
in the absence of a peace settlement. While the return process was under way
in August, various statements were issued by Jordanian cabinet ministers and
over Amman radio, calling on the returnees to be "a thorn in the aggressor's
flesh." In a letter to Thant, on August 16, Israel protested the Jordanian
"campaign of increasing violence, vituperation and direct incitement, both of
the prospective returnees and of the Arabs in Israel-controlled territories."
On December 14 Ambassador Michael Comay, head of the Israel delegation,
told the UN Assembly's Special Political Committee that Jordan's
actions "converted a humanitarian question into a political and security one,
and itself obstructed a general repatriation." Israel was unable to agree to
an "open-door policy," he said, "unless and until there was a wider Israel-
Jordan understanding,'^ and noted that the refugees themselves were "increasingly
reluctant to come back until there was peace/' Comay called it
"unrealistic to expect the government of Israel to permit an unrestricted and
uncontrolled movement across the cease-fire lines, regardless of the policies,
pronouncements or practices" of the Arab states whose citizens were involved.
He concluded that the displacement of West Bank residents could best be
adjusted "in the context of an honorable settlement with Israel."
Later, at the same session, Congressman L. H. Fountain (Dem., N.C.),
representative of the United States, repeated the United States view that all
persons displaced during or since the June war "should be allowed and encouraged
to return to their homes." After the Assembly's plenary on December
19 unanimously reaffirmed the July resolution, asking Israel to facilitate
the return of the new refugees, Fountain reiterated the United States