U.S. Delegation at Lausanne Withdraws Support for Gaza Plan; Seeks Arab Refugee Return

A striking change in U.S. policy in the U.N. Conciliation Commission has taken place in the last 48 hours since the arrival here of Raymond Hare, deputy director of the Off ice of Near Eastern and African Affairs in the state Department it was learned today. As a result of new directives from Washington Commission sources state, the American delegation has withdrawn its support for the “Gaza Plan” as formulated in letters to the Commission by the Israeli delegation. it was first breached from U.N. quarters and called for ceding the Egypt-held Gaza strip to Israel along with its population of Arab residents and refugees.

(Weekend reports from Lake Success declared that on May 21 the Israeli delegation in Lausanne submitted a proposal offering to admit 230,000 Arab refugees to Israeli territory on condition that the 150-mile Gaza coastal strip be ceded to the Jewish state. Similar reports last week emanating from Lausanne were denied by Israeli authorities in Tel Aviv.)

The Americans have now thrown their weight behind the latest Arab proposals as a token of good faith. They require that prior to any peace settlement the Israeli Government should allow the immediate return of all refugees from western Galilee, Lydda, the Ramleh district, Beersheba and those from the Musrara quarter of Jerusalem–a total estimated at 100,000 to 150,000 Arabs.

At the same time, the U.S. delegation has let it be known that the Commission would interpret any reduction in the status of the Israeli delegation here as equivalent to an Israeli walk-out from the Lausanne peace talks. This is the Commission’s response to the departure of half the Israeli delegation last week and to unofficial warnings that it might not be worthwhile for Dr. Walter Eytan, director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and chief Israeli delegate, to return to Lausanne during the unfruitful phase of the talks.

It is already becoming clear that the conciliation theory advanced by the Commission has been singularly unproductive. The gap between the Israelis and the Arabs is wider today than five weeks ago before the conciliation process was started. The expectation of the Commission that Dr. Eytan would cone back from his president visit to Tel Aviv armed with new and more helpful instructions seems to be based more on wishful thinking than on convincing evidence.

The Jerusalem subcommittee is to resume consideration tomorrow of eight separate plans for internationalization of the Holy Places. Three main issues remain: the complicated French plan for part internationalization with tribunals and other complex guarantees, the General Assembly’s outright internationalization proposal which is now supported by the United States and Israel’s project for the partition of Jerusalem between Trans Jordan and Israel, with a U.K. commission to supervise the free access of pilgrims and the well-being of the Holy Places.