The government is considering the appointment of Arye Eliav, former leader of the leftist Sheli faction, to take charge of rehabilitation efforts for the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, it was learned here.
Eliav, a leading dove, tentatively accepted the assignment pending a final decision by the government. He has already toured the refugee camps and submitted his report to the Israeli authorities. He declined to disclose its contents but said it was a basic proposal on how to tackle the problem. The first stage would not require a large expenditure, he said.
An estimated 500,000 Palestinians live in Lebanese refugee camps some of which served as Palestine Liberation Organization strongholds before the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Israeli forces destroyed the PLO in all of the camps except the Shatila and Sabra camps in Beirut. Eliav said he would limit his work strictly to the Palestinian population, observing that the Lebanese population could take care of itself.
One of the first steps should be a comprehensive study of the problems by a variety of experts who have dealt with the rehabilitation of refugees in the past, Eliav said. He himself was in charge of absorbing the massive Jewish immigration into Israel from North African countries in the 1950s.
Eliav is an outspoken supporter of an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip which is anathema to the Likud government. But he expressed hope that he could cooperate with the government on behalf of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon despite the vast political and ideological differences between them.
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