New Book: Waldman, Anglo-American Diplomacy and the Palestinian Refugee Problem

Waldman, Simon A. Anglo-American Diplomacy and the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1948-51. Basingstoke, UK and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

This volume examines British and US attitudes towards the means and mechanisms for the facilitation of an Arab-Israeli reconciliation, focusing specifically on the refugee factor in diplomatic initiatives. It explains why Britain and the US were unable to reconcile the local parties to an agreement on the future of the Palestinian refugees.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Introduction: The Palestinian Refugee Problem as an Impediment to Peace
• 1. The Palestine Factor in Anglo-American Post-War Middle Eastern Policy, 1945–48
• 2. Friends Reunited? Britain and the US Respond to the Palestinian Refugee Problem
• 3. Diplomatic Deadlock: The Palestine Conciliation Commission and the Palestinian Refugee Problem (Part 1)
• 4. Economics over Politics: The Palestine Conciliation Commission and the Palestinian Refugee Problem (Part 2)
• 5. Compensation: The Key to Break the Logjam?
• 6. The Refugee Factor in Direct Arab-Israeli Negotiations
• 7. The Birth of UNRWA: The Institutionalization of Failed Diplomacy
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

 

SIMON A. WALDMAN is Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at King’s College London, UK. He teaches the Arab-Israeli Conflict, statebuilding in the Middle East and Turkish history and politics.

 
See also: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137431523
 

 

 

New Article: Yehudai, Jewish Repatriation from Palestine to Europe, 1945–48

Yehudai, Ori. “Displaced in the National Home: Jewish Repatriation from Palestine to Europe, 1945–48.” Jewish Social Studies 20.2 (2014): 69-110.

 

URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jewish_social_studies/v020/20.2.yehudai.html

 

Abstract

At the end of World War II, thousands of European Jews who had found refuge in Palestine during the war sought to return to their countries of origin through a repatriation program launched by the Middle East office of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Their repatriation was a source of conflict between the Zionist leadership in Palestine and UNRRA. The former accused the latter of encouraging Jewish return to Europe, whereas UNRRA officials accused Zionists in the Yishuv of trying to prevent repatriation and of ostracizing those opting to return. The controversy derived from conflicting ideological and political considerations regarding the role of Jewish refugees in postwar reconstruction. Yet the positions of the quarreling parties were disconnected from those of repatriation applicants, who were determined to rebuild their lives outside Palestine but conceived of postwar reconstruction mainly in material and personal rather than ideological and political terms.