Speech #910215900

We shall fight on to victory. Even for decades. for generations if necessary. The Palestinian guerrilla movement arose out of the Palestinian refugee problem. For more than 20 years a resolution of this problem has defied the best efforts of the United Nations as well as the individual efforts of many nations. including the United States. I have made two trips to the Middle East and a major purpose of both was to look into this problem and particularly into administration of the program for relief of the refugees as administered by the United Works and Relief Administration under the auspices of the United Nations. The first of these trips was made in the fall of 1959. I learned then and reported to the Senate that the deplorable conditions under which refugees lived constituted a festering cancer in the. Middle East. I reported to President Eisenhower that the administration of the refugee program in Jordan was "immoral. dishonest. and unfair." I found that no effort was made to validate ration cards which entitled the holder to rations. that cards were still in existence in the name of persons long since dead. that they were used as collateral for loans and were the subject for bargain and sale. and that because of the fraudulent use of cards many children of refugees could not be added to the rolls. I urged that our Government. which was paying 70 percent of the cost of the program. use the leverage of its financial support to require that administration of the program be cleaned up. I returned to the Middle East in the summer of 1967. within a few days after the Six Day War. I found that the refugee problem was worse instead of better. There had been no improvement in the administration of the relief program and the number of refugees had again been substantially increased as a result of the recent conflict. There was the added element that some of the refugee camps were within the area newly occupied by Israel. Upon my return I again reported to the Senate the conditions which I found. In a speech on the floor of the Senate on July 12. 1967.