The problem was that when it came to the Palestinian Arab problem, Roosevelt was all talk and no action. He knew, logically, that transfer was the only long-term solution, as his letter to Brandeis and his statement to Morgenthau (and other, similar statements) clearly indicate. But he did not have the political courage to defy the British, the State Department, or the Arab oil kingdoms. He ultimately chose to turn a blind eye to Palestine, leaving the British to close the gates of Palestine while millions of Jewish refugees remained stranded in Europe, while the State Department blocked rescue efforts and sealed off America from would-be immigrants. Roosevelt chose the path of least political risk, and the Jewish people paid the price.

Just a few years later, the Israeli government itself embraced the transfer idea, albeit under somewhat different circumstances. More than half a million Arabs fled Israel during the 1948 war, and soon after the hostilities subsided, there was international pressure on Israel to permit them to return. The new government, under Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, began looking for ways to justify their refusal to readmit the Arabs. At their behest, funds from the Jewish Agency were quietly given to Joseph Schechtman, a historian and journalist who had been close to Jabotinsky, to do research on recent population transfers around the world. Schechtman authored a series of books and articles on population transfers in Europe and Asia, to help popularize the idea that shifting large numbers of people from one country to another was a reasonable means of solving ethnic conflicts.

The number and scope of the transfers Schechtman documented was nothing short of remarkable. In 1922-1923, a treaty between Greece and Turkey provided for the transfer of 189,000 ethnic Greeks from Turkey to Greece, and 355,000 Turks from Greek-occupied territory to Turkey. The transfer was proposed and supervised by the League of Nations High Commission for Refugees, Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, winner of the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Soviet-German treaty of 1939 required 128,000 Germans to leave Soviet-occupied territory, and the relocation of many Russians from German areas. In 1940, Bulgaria took in 61,000 Bulgarians from Romania and sent 100,000 Romanians back to their native country. The following year, 62,000 ethnic Germans were exchanged for 21,000 Lithuanians and Russians. In 1946, some 30,000 Czechs and Slovaks were transferred between the two countries. A 1946 Czech-Hungarian agreement transferred 31,000 Magyars to Hungary and 33,000 Slovaks to Czechoslovakia. The Czech-Soviet poppulation exchange of 1947 involved 28,000 Czechs and 4,500 ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. Three Soviet-Polish treaties in 1947 provided for the transfer of some 2.5 million people. And there were many other examples cited by Schechtman.

In early 1949, again at Sharett's request, Schechtman was hired by the Jewish Agency's New York office as their expert on refugee matters. Working closely with the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Eliahu Epstein, and Israel's representative to the United Nations, Abba Eban, Schechtman authored a series of lengthy studies on "Resettlement Prospects" for Arabs who had left Palestine. The pamphlets surveyed agricultural and social conditions in the various Arab countrie, and made a persuasive case for the permanent resettlement of the Arab refugees in Jordan, Syria, and Iraq.

By far the most important supporter of the transfer idea, and perhaps the most unlikely as well, was Franklin D. Roosevelt.

At the same time, Sharett arranged for another longtime Revisionist, Eliahu Ben-Horin, to receive a salary from the American Zionist Emergency Council -- the main U.S. Zionist establishment group -- while he worked to revive public interest in Herbert Hoover's transfer plan. Israeli officials correctly presumed that a transfer plan linked to the name of a former American president would find a greater audience in the US. than one promoted by the State of Israel. Ben-Horin's efforts on behalf of the Hoover Plan in 1949 netted statements of endorsement from former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, former Secretary of State Sumner Welles, former Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, and others. Another supporter was Clarence Pickett, a senior official of the American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker group that would later become notorious for its hostility to Israel. Pickett believed that settling the Palestinian Arabs in Arab countries was far more humanitarian than keeping them in squalid refugee camps or trying to flood them into Israel.

In the end, Ben-Horin's efforts came to naught. In the face of opposition from Arab leaders, neither the United States nor the United Nations would muster the political courage to organize a full-scale resettlement of Palestinian Arabs. It was a crucial moment in history, an opportunity to resolve the Palestinian refugee problem once and for all. The opportunity was missed.

Ilana Sternbaum is a freelance writer and commentator on Mideast affairs.

October 2002               - 9 -               Outpost