Israel Ambassador Avraham Harman, addressing an audience last night at Yale University, said that until the Arab leaders are willing to “articulate” to their people that Israel exists, there will be no solution to the difficult problems facing the Middle East.” I have reason to believe that there are Arab leaders who tell themselves of the reality of Israel but don’t tell this to their people,” he declared.
Mr. Harman emphasized the Arab countries must be willing to accept the fact of Israel’s existence and durability if there is to be a solution of the Arab refugee problem. He said this problem has not been solved because the Arabs have used the refugees for conducting a “political controversy.” “If the Arabs wanted to solve this problem,” Ambassador Harman said, “they would not urge repatriation of the refugees and dragoon them to go back and blow up Israel, but would absorb them into their own countries.”
Declaring that the Arabs were responsible for the refugees by starting the war in 1948–a war which also created a Jewish refugee problem from the Arab countries–Ambassador Harman reiterated a position taken last week by Israeli President Itzhak Ben-Zvi in an interview with the Washington Post, by saying that there had already been an exchange of population. “We have 450,000 Jewish refugees from the Arab countries,” he said, “and the Arabs have 450,000 Arab refugees from Israel.” However, he added, Israel is willing to negotiate with the Arabs on the refugee problem, “even ahead of a peace settlement.”
Israel is willing to pay “compensation for abandoned property,” he stated, adding that Israel is equally willing to negotiate a disarmament agreement for the Middle East. Such an agreement he said, would be amenable to inspection as most of “the deadly weapons are not manufactured in the Middle East, but imported.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
