The Arab refugees in the Middle East cannot be absorbed by the Arab areas where they now live–Gaza, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon–because these areas are “already saturated with farmers and unskilled laborers,” the General Assembly was told here today by Dr. John W. Davis, director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
Dr. Davis made that statement in his report to the Assembly, which will be discussed soon by the body’s Special Political Committee. “The simple truth is,” Dr. Davis contends,” that the jobs at which the refugees could be employed do not exist within the host countries. Nor could any large number of jobs be created in these countries–except at an uneconomic level of investment–because of the limited local resources and scope for employment.”
“The fact has to be faced.” the report continues, “that, for the majority of these refugees–two-thirds or more–the areas where they are presently located hold out almost no prospect of their absorption into satisfactory, self-supporting employment. It follows that, if these refugees are ever to find suitable employment, they will have to move across an international frontier in one direction or another.”
The report does not pinpoint specifically the “international frontier” which the Arab refugees will have to cross. But Dr. Davis says flatly that “the refugees depending on UNRWA have been denied rehabilitation through repatriation or compensation because Paragraph 11 of United Nations Resolution 194 (adopted in 1948) has never been implemented. They have not found work where they reside because these countries already have an ample supply of farmers and unskilled workers. And they have not moved to nearby countries because these already have an abundance of such workers.”
Dr. Davis did not mention the fact that the same resolution of 1948 also envisaged the possibility of the resettlement of the refugees in Arab countries.
The UNRWA director, at a press conference here supplementing the submission of his report, declared that large-scale economic integration in the Middle East, like the ten-year $14,000,000,000 plan projected two years ago by Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, are “not acceptable to the Arab people” as an undertaking by UNRWA. “The less we talk about economic development,” he declared,” the more we do to solve the problems.”
For the three-year tenure remaining to UNRWA–1961-63–Dr. Davis projects budgets totaling $40,600,000 for 1961; $39,400,000 for 1962; and $41,200,000 for 1963. In 1959, UNRWA, according to the report, spent $34,072,673, of which the United States contributed 70 percent, or $23,000,000.
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