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President of Iraq Says Only Arab Aim is ‘to Annihilate Israel’

September 23, 1963
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Iraqi President Aref today said that any payments of compensation to Jews whose property was confiscated when they left Iraq, Syria or Egypt, were “out of the question” if they subsequently settled in Israel.

In an interview in the Tunisian newspaper, Jeune Afrique, Marshal Aref also said he sees no possibility for an Arab-Jewish state within a federation of Arab countries.

“Our only aim is to annihilate Israel,” he declared, adding that, as long as Jews considered themselves a nation, “there is no other solution to the Palestine issue except war.”

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