Summary
The Conciliation Commission’s third progress report, for 9 April to 8 June 1949, transmitted by the Secretary-General on 21 June 1949 under paragraph 13 of Resolution 194 (III) and headed Lausanne, 13 June 1949: at Lausanne, where Egypt, the Hashemite Jordan Kingdom, Lebanon, Syria and Israel sent delegations from 27 April, the Arab delegations and Israel separately signed the Protocol of 12 May 1949 taking the 29 November 1947 boundaries, as shown on the annexed map, as the basis of discussion subject to necessary adjustments; on refugees, the Commission records that it has not succeeded in achieving Israel’s acceptance of the repatriation principle in the 11 December 1948 resolution, that the Arab delegations cite that refusal for their reticence on territorial questions, and that neither side accepted the other’s specific proposals — Israel’s offer to accept the entire Arab population of Gaza, inhabitants and refugees, as citizens if Gaza were incorporated in Israel, and the Arab proposal for the immediate return of refugees from the areas the Protocol map assigned to the Arab zone — while on Jerusalem the Committee on Jerusalem pursued a questionnaire toward an international regime even as Israel established ministerial and other public services inside the Resolution 194 Jerusalem area, against an Arab protest memorandum (Third Progress Report of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine, PDF p.1-13).
What the file is
Document A/921, 13 PDF pages, about 4,158 words, English text of a report whose original is marked French on PDF p.1. The body (paras. 1–40, PDF p.1-10) is followed by Annex A (the record and text of the Protocol as signed with the Arab delegations, PDF p.11), Annex B (the record and text as signed with the Israeli delegation, PDF p.12) and Annex C (a description of the map attached to the Protocol, PDF p.13; the map itself is not reproduced). The text copy’s OCR is heavily garbled throughout; the account below follows the wording reassembled from the original at garbled points, and only one quotation is given. The copy’s running header gives A/921 on PDF p.1 and a garbled form read as A/927 on later pages; the section heading for the Protocol on PDF p.2 reads 1942 in the copy, for 1949.
Section by section
- Introduction, paras. 1–3 (PDF p.1). After the Beirut talks and the Tel Aviv visit, the Commission proposed Lausanne delegations; Egypt, the Hashemite Jordan Kingdom, Lebanon and Syria, and Israel, accepted and sent highly qualified delegations headed by persons of great authority in foreign affairs. The first Lausanne meeting was on 27 April 1949; official meetings and personal contacts led the Commission to believe a sincere desire existed on both sides for positive progress toward re-establishing peace in Palestine.
- A. Conciliation, paras. 4–9 (PDF p.1-2). Lausanne, unlike Beirut, bears on the Commission’s general conciliation task toward a final settlement of all outstanding questions, not only on single tasks such as refugees or Jerusalem. The Commission would welcome direct negotiations but has not found it possible to engage the parties directly under its auspices. The Arab delegations insisted the Commission treat them as a single party, en bloc, since the Palestine question concerns all Arab States equally; the Israeli delegation preferred to discuss each question separately with the State or States immediately concerned. The Commission kept maximum flexibility, including separate meetings with one or more Arab delegations. A General Committee of the members’ chief advisers was constituted to study questions with the delegations; it has already examined refugee and territorial questions.
- B. Protocol of 12 May 1949, paras. 10–11 (PDF p.2-3). To stress that the outstanding matters, particularly refugees and territory, were closely interlinked, the Commission asked the two parties separately to sign the Protocol as the basis of work. The annexed map indicated the boundaries defined in the resolution of 29 November 1947, taken as the basis of discussion, on the understanding that any necessary adjustments would be proposed. The signing let the Commission press both parties for their views on all outstanding questions.
- C. The refugee question, paras. 12–22 (PDF p.3-6). Discussion ran at numerous lengthy meetings with the Israeli and Arab delegations and with refugee representatives, notably the Congress of Refugees of Ramallah and the Jaffa and District Inhabitants Committee. A precise distinction was drawn between repatriation, resettlement and rehabilitation on the one hand and immediate preliminary measures by Israel to safeguard refugee rights and property on the other. On the first: the Arab delegations hold that the first step must be Israel’s acceptance of the 11 December 1948 repatriation principle for refugees wishing to return and live at peace with their neighbours; the Commission has not succeeded in achieving that acceptance. The Commission restates its second report’s view that, the principle granted, not all refugees will decide to return, so Arab agreement in principle to resettlement of those who do not desire to return will be needed; the Arab delegations have not yet been able to examine that question officially. Israel’s refusal is cited by the Arab delegations as the reason for their reserved and reticent attitude on territorial questions, and the Commission finds nothing to change its second report’s views, in particular its paras. 8, 9, 10 and 14. Two specific proposals are recorded (paras. 16–17, summarised in the Summary) and were transmitted without an opinion on their merits; neither side accepted any of them. On preliminary measures: the Commission had, in Jerusalem before Lausanne, presented Israel on its own initiative with a list of measures it considered fair and just; at Lausanne the Arab delegations and refugee organisations sought, among other things, return of orange-grove proprietors with the necessary labourers, reuniting of families separated by the hostilities, and refugee access to accounts blocked by Israel; all remain in correspondence and conversation with the Israeli delegation. The Technical Committee has been constituted and will proceed immediately to Palestine for field studies on repatriation, resettlement, rehabilitation and preliminary measures. On 7 June the relief organisations — the United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees and the three distributing organisations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the League of Red Cross Societies and the American Friends Service Committee — warned that interruption of relief during the winter for lack of funds would be a real catastrophe for refugees in the mountainous areas, for which they would take no responsibility; the Commission, though relief is not directly within its competence, draws the Secretary-General’s attention to the gravity of the situation and suggests new funds for refugee relief be among the first matters examined by the General Assembly.
- D. Territorial questions, paras. 23–33 (PDF p.7-8). The Protocol provided the starting point and framework; proposals from any delegation would be transmitted to the others in the form the Commission considered appropriate. Israel proposed: the Mandate frontier with Egypt and with Lebanon; if that were accepted, acceptance of all Arabs in the Gaza area, inhabitants and refugees, as citizens (para. 26, restating para. 16); the Mandate frontier with the Hashemite Jordan Kingdom, from El Hamma south of El Fatur in the north and from mid–Dead Sea opposite Engeddi (spelling as printed) to the Gulf of Aqaba in the south; and, for the central area under Jordanian military authority, a boundary following the present military line with modifications in both parties’ interests, Israel citing its security and economic development, while disclaiming any ambition for that area, leaving its disposition to a proposal agreed by the Arab delegations, its Arab inhabitants and the refugees, and recognising Jordan as the de facto military occupying Power until its status was settled. Jerusalem’s disposition was stated to be a separate question outside this proposal. The Arab delegations read their return proposal territorially: the listed areas are designated Arab territory, in principle to be recognised as such. They told the Commission Israel’s Egypt, Lebanon and Gaza proposals were a flagrant violation of the Protocol, involving annexations rather than adjustments; Israel, for its part, could not accept the proportionate distribution of territory agreed in 1947 as a criterion for a settlement in present circumstances.
- E. Question of Jerusalem, paras. 34–38 (PDF p.8-9). Before leaving Jerusalem the Committee on Jerusalem consulted the Christian, Moslem and Jewish religious authorities and visited Nazareth and other Holy Places in Galilee. At Lausanne it continued work with both sides toward proposals for an international regime in conformity with the 11 December 1948 resolution and acceptable to both, and circulated a questionnaire on points it considers fundamental; so far only Israel’s reply has been received. Since the previous report Israel has established ministerial and other public services within the para. 8 Jerusalem area; the Arab delegations protested by memorandum demanding immediate withdrawal of the administration and services installed, in their phrase as reported, in contempt of the 11 December 1948 resolution, and the memorandum was transmitted to Israel. The Commission and the Prime Minister of Israel had exchanged letters on the services in March and April, copies sent to the Secretary-General on 11 April.
- F. Conclusion, paras. 39–40 (PDF p.9-10). The immediate problem is linking the refugee and territorial negotiations: Arab pressure for refugee negotiations and Israeli pressure for territorial negotiations threaten a deadlock on both. The Commission is endeavouring to lead the Arab States to negotiate on territorial questions and to persuade Israel that it must contribute in a substantial manner to the solution of the refugee problem, in both its general aspect (repatriation, resettlement and rehabilitation) and its immediate aspect (preliminary measures safeguarding rights and property).
- Annex A (PDF p.11). Record of the 12 May 1949, 11.30 a.m. Lausanne meeting with Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and the Protocol as signed there: present de Boisanger (Chairman, France), Yalcin (Turkey), Ethridge (United States of America) and Azcarate (Principal Secretary), with Abdel Monem Mostafa, Fauzi Pasha Mulki, Fouad Bey Ammoun and Adnan Atassi for the four Arab States. Signatures as listed in the annex.
- Annex B (PDF p.12). Record of the 12 May 1949, 10.30 a.m. meeting with Israel, at which Dr. Walter Eytan signed the same Protocol with the Commission.
- Annex C (PDF p.13). The document attached to the Protocol: a map of Palestine showing the territory attributed to the Arab and Jewish States respectively by the resolution of 29 November 1947, described but not reproduced.
Key passages
- The Protocol’s agreed basis, in the Annex A and B text: exchanges with the two parties will bear upon the “territorial adjustments necessary to the above-indicated objectives” (Annexes A–B, PDF p.11-12), the objectives being those of the 11 December 1948 resolution regarding refugees, respect for their rights and preservation of their property, and territorial and other questions.
- On repatriation, the report’s central finding is paraphrased rather than quoted, the copy being garbled at the passage: the Commission has not succeeded in achieving acceptance by the Government of Israel of the principle in the 11 December 1948 resolution concerning repatriation of refugees who wish to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours (para. 13, PDF p.3).
Evidence the work relies on
- The report is the Commission’s own record of its Lausanne work; it relies on no external evidence section. Its internal references are to its second progress report (paras. 1, 13–15, 20, in particular second report paras. 8, 9, 10 and 14), to the General Assembly resolutions of 29 November 1947 (the Protocol map’s boundaries) and 11 December 1948 (paragraph 11’s repatriation principle, paragraph 8’s Jerusalem area, and paragraph 13, the basis of this report’s transmission), to the Security Council resolution of 16 November 1948 as recalled in the second report’s framing, and to the letters exchanged with the Prime Minister of Israel in March and April 1949, copies transmitted to the Secretary-General on 11 April. The proposals it records are attributed to the delegations that made them; the Commission expressly transmitted them without an opinion on their merits or faults (para. 18).
Analysis
The report’s method is a negotiating record, not an inquiry: it states the parties’ positions in their own terms, attributes each proposal to its delegation, and records the Commission’s procedural devices (en bloc versus separate treatment, the General Committee, the Technical Committee, the Protocol) and its two substantive judgments — that the second report’s position stands unchanged, and that the refugee and territorial tracks must be linked. Its central thesis is interlinkage: the Protocol was designed to force both questions onto one table by making the 1947 map the common basis subject to adjustments, and the Conclusion names the failure of that linkage, each side pressing only its own track, as the immediate problem. The text gives no vote, no refugee count and no verbatim minutes beyond the Protocol; what each delegation said beyond the summarised proposals exists here only as the Commission presents it.
People, organizations, places and events
Palestine Conciliation Commission, Gaza, City of Jerusalem, Holy Places, International Committee of the Red Cross, League of Red Cross Societies, American Friends Service Committee, Hashemite Jordan Kingdom, Israel, Egypt
Concepts
Right of Return, Corpus separatum
How it relates to other sources
- This is the Lausanne record that later sources in the wiki summarise from outside: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (PDF p.274) presents Lausanne in spring 1949, based on Resolution 194 and centred on return, as deliberately torpedoed by Ben-Gurion and Abdullah for a partition of what was left of Palestine between them; the Commission’s own report records no such agreement or intent — it records Israel disclaiming ambition for the central area and recognising Jordan as de facto military occupying Power there (para. 29), and the deadlock it names is the unlinking of the refugee and territorial tracks. Both accounts are held, not reconciled.
- It is the third in the sequence the constituting text set running: Resolution 194 (III): Palestine — Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator established the Commission and required periodic progress reports to the Secretary-General, and Resolution 303 (IV): Palestine — Question of an international regime for the Jerusalem area and the protection of the Holy Places later records that the Assembly studied the Commission’s reports before restating the Jerusalem regime.
- Its Gaza proposal (paras. 16, 26) is the primary record of the offer Rethinking Statehood in Palestine and other later works discuss as an Israeli Gaza-for-refugees proposal: here the offer is expressly conditional on incorporation of the Gaza area in Israel and on international aid for resettlement, and the delegation stated it could give no number for refugees it would accept if Gaza were not incorporated.
- The relief warning in paras. 21–22 is the immediate background to Resolution 302 (IV): Assistance to Palestine refugees, which five months later established a successor agency and new funding for the same relief whose winter interruption the distributing organisations feared here.
Open questions
- The Arab return list differs between para. 17 (PDF p.4: Western Galilee, Lydda, Ramle and Beersheba, Jaffa, Jerusalem and a coastline phrase the copy garbles) and para. 31 (PDF p.8: Western Galilee, Jaffa, the central area including Lydda, Ramle and Beersheba, the southern coastal zone and Jerusalem). Both lists are recorded as printed.
- The document number is A/921 on PDF p.1; later running headers in the copy are garbled and read as A/927. The original’s printed headers beyond PDF p.1 were not separately verified letter by letter.
- The report gives no number for the refugees, and no Israeli figure for how many refugees it would accept without Gaza; para. 16 records expressly that no such proposal could be submitted.
Coverage
PDF p.1-13 of 13, read in full