Speech #840184377

We have talked and talked to the Arab leaders. and we have run up against a stone wall. They will not move in that direction. I think it is high time that our Department of State changes its policy in that regard and make it known in no uncertain terms that this problem must be solved. that we will no longer continue to permit the Arab leaders to use this as a political problem and to keep those refugees stirred up emotionally against resettlement. I might say that I have been in that area three timesI was there In 1948. 1949. and again in 1955. After each of my visits there I have been visited at home. unsolicited. by Arabs. Moslem Arabs. and Christian Arabs. indicating that much of the story we get out of there about the unwillingness of the Arabs to be resettled is the talk not of the Arab refugees themselves. but of the leaders of the Arabs. If we can let those leaders know in no uncertain terms that this problem must be solved. you can begin to move those Arabs out. not en masse but family by family and resettle them. We will then get rid of this emotional problem that has kept that area stirred up all through the years.