President Nasser of the United Arab Republic acted in apparent defiance today of the Arab League by countenancing the creation of a “Palestine National Union” to represent 250,000 refugees in the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip and another 10,000 in Syria.
The Mayor of Gaza announced the proposed formation of the refugee body in a broadcast today in which he said the new organization had President Nasser’s blessings. He said the Union eventually would embrace the Palestine refugees in other Arab countries as well.
The question of a status and organization for the Palestine refugees was a main issue in the three-week meeting of the Arab League which just concluded at Cairo. The League failed completely to reach any agreement on this question, largely because of the opposition of the Kingdom of Jordan which saw in the plan a threat to Jordan sovereignty over the Palestine lands west of the Jordan River which Jordan seized and annexed in the 1948 Arab war against Israel.
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