Walt Rostow at work:
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291. Memorandum From the President's Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson/1/
Washington, May 21, 1966.
/1/Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Memos to the President, Walt W. Rostow, Vol. 3. Confidential.
Ambassador Goldberg has sent you a very imaginative proposal for tackling the Palestine refugee
problem./2/
/2/Goldberg's May 19 letter to the President is ibid.
His idea is to persuade Israel to announce unilaterally that it will allow any refugees to return to Israel who want to, subject only to annual quotas and security screening. This would be a bow to the Arab claim that the refugees have a "right" to return. Israel would offer compensation to those who wanted to settle elsewhere. While this might not work, Israel would at least have made a move to break the current impasse.
Our preliminary reaction is that, even though there are some good new ideas here, the Israelis would not buy this. They feel they have to put upper limits on the number of refugees coming back into Israel for security reasons. If they were sure the Arabs would reject the idea, they might consider it to make political points. However, they feel that the present situation is tolerable and time is gradually eroding the problem.
There are clearly fresh winds blowing in the Israeli Government and greater willingness to think about a long-term Arab-Israeli accommodation. We do want to guard against pushing these new thinkers too far too fast because their hard line cohorts will be all too ready to jump them. So we would want to work out any such initiative very thoroughly before proposing it to them.
I think we ought to give State the outlines of Goldberg's plan to staff out in detail. If you approve, I will send it over without attribution.
Walt
state.gov
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This is a common ploy by the supporters of Israel, including Kissinger. Let's not push the moderate Israelis too hard, because they are under a lot of pressure, bless their delicate souls. The "fresh winds blowing" in Israel resulted in a full frontal assault by Israel on its Arab neighbors just a year after this memo. |
