against resettlement but if it is acceptable for the two to get together for a common purpose they will do it.

A great deal is being done in Iraq. We have an excellent man on their development board. We are working away at the dams-it is not quite as simple as you might have indicated. You cannot just dust off this Roman stuff. You have to make more calculations. That all takes time, and heartbreaking time. It seems like nothing happens between 1 year and the next but things are happening.

Mrs. BOLTON. When we were out there Ambassador George Wadsworth told us there was 90 feet of the richest soil in the world down underneath that. We know there were about 16 or 18, even 20, million people living there before Tamarlane. Surely there is no reason on earth why it should not be rehabilitated as a place to live.

Mr. GARDINER. They are on their road to better things and we are helping them through genuine technical assistance to people in Iraq. They have the funds.

Mrs. BOLTON. Would it be through our people already there that this could be broadened and a new aspect of possibility be given them?

Mr. GARDINER. I think so. Our people on the spot do not want to talk refugees.

Mrs. BOLTON. Let them talk workmen.

Mr. GARDINER. That is right, if there are more things for them to do, yes, but we say we have other problems to solve first. They have flood refugees and nomadic tribes.

Mrs. BOLTON. They have to get the rivers fixed.

Mr. GARDINER. The rivers are being fixed as fast as hands can fix them.

Mrs. BOLTON. More hands would make for more speed.

Mr. GARDINER. First of all you have to have a few skilled hands.

I appreciate this is a broad grant of authority. I do know that the Secretary is very interested in it. He has already testified on this point and I believe that the President is very interested not only in the area itself but in the way this program is presented. We are asking for a grant for the region.

Mrs. BOLTON. That includes Israel?

Mr. GARDINER. That is correct, Mrs. Bolton, and we have undertaken to present this illustrative program.

If you like, this is a giveaway program. Call it as many bad names as you want, but it is presented to you frankly as a giveaway program: but let us consider what our interests are, and whether it is not in our interest to speed up this development of which we have spoken in this region. I can assure you that they will move faster with this tangible expression of American interest than it will otherwise. I think we all agree we are sitting on a powder keg.

In the case of the refugee problem

Mr. VORYS. Could I ask you this: Do those people know they are sitting on a powder keg, too? I just wonder if all over the world other people realize they are sitting on a powder keg.

For instance, take this oil. That oil is not going to be available to either side in the case of a big war. That is one thing that is perfectly clear. In case of a big war, whichever side has it, the other side is going to blast the daylights out of it.

I just wonder if those people there think or whether anybody else ever thinks that they are sitting on a powder keg?

Mr. GARDINER. I think you would and I think you would react to it in a different way. The result of starvation might be indolence and lassitude or it might well be a rather vigorous reaction.

Mrs. BOLTON. If nothing else were offered them, if there was something else for them to do.

Mr. GARDINER. The devil makes some evil work for idle hands to do; and the good Lord makes good work for busy hands to do.

Mrs. BOLTON. If you take the countries where there is great poverty-in any of the areas there-they are almost side by side-I think you said they were the inhabitants of a country who are far worse off for food than the refugees who get food from us.

Mr. GARDINER. That is true and that is a very difficult thing with our refugee problem. What has happened in Jordan is refugee pressure on wage levels. People used to work for 250 fils a day, and now they are working for 100 because the refugee is willing to work for 100, because the refugee gets rations.

When we are attacked for not having a sufficiently high standard of rations, that is the defense, and I think it is a reasonable defense.

Mrs. BOLTON. The Jordan area has interested me very much because certain Arabs I know have that whole little area there where they are getting water and they are growing cotton and tobacco and other things. I refer to Musa Alami.

Mr. GARDINER. He has done something people said could not be done. He has taken that water out of wells and his crops have grown; and he has a school there and the children are as clean as they can be. They are happy children. He does not want to expand. I talked to him the other day.

What the thing cost the Lord only knows. I think if that unit cost were projected over 860,000 refugees, you would probably be horrified. But he has done brilliantly and he has given us a pilot project. I am sorry that he is not talking of expanding.

Mrs. BOLTON. Nevertheless, it is a pilot project.

Mr. GARDINER. It is a pilot project and it has proven that you can take land around Jericho and put water on it with good results, but please do not ask what that costs. We would hope that other things could be done for less. It is very, very fine; and he is the salvation of at least 100 children of the next generation and I am glad to report, Mrs. Bolton, that as far as the U. N. is concerned I think we made a great step forward in our educational program. We have a wonderful man running it now. He was the head of the Ottawa school system for 30 years.

Mrs. BOLTON. Where is he?

Mr. GARDINER. His headquarters are Beirut. He has already increased the schoolteacher group in UNRWA very materially. He has 1,500 instead of 800 schoolteachers working with the refugees themselves. He said he had things pretty good for himself in the past, and it was about time he went out and did some really hard work and he is doing it. He is an elderly man but he is sharp.

If we turn loose on the next generation 200,000 or 300,000 illiterate Palestine Arabs, we are not doing what we should for your children and mine.

Mr. LANHAM. You spoke of something being a giveaway program. Isn't, then the technical assistance program becoming an economic aid program?

Mr. GARDINER. Sir, we have attempted in this presentation to call a spade a spade. We have a technical assistance program which is comparatively modest in its scope and we say that we need special economic aid funds beyond that in certain parts of the world. We are not going to call them technical assistance. This is special economic aid. I do not think it need go on forever but I do not think you can drop this thing like a hot potato next year. I think you have a problem that is a continuing problem. I do not know how much you may ask for the next year but I certainly would not want to tell you that this sum is going to hold us for any extended period of time. It may be that we will come back to you and say, "This money is going to be turned back to the Treasury because we have no success in our negotiations." But what we are asking for is the grant of authority which will enable us to talk firmly with these countries on things we think we can help them do and help them do more quickly than they can do it themselves. Mr. JUDD. Let us get Mr. Lanham's question concluded. Mr. VORYS (presiding). Go ahead.

Mr. LANHAM. I have heard criticism that point 4 is being turned into a program of economic assistance. That may be well and good; but I think we should be realistic enough to say that it is really that. Mr. GARDINER. It certainly is, sir, with respect to these funds I am talking about now.

Mr. LANHAM. Thank you, sir.

Mr. GARDINER. The intention would be, of course, that these funds would be administered operationally by the TCA. The Secretary of State has expressed himself on his desire to take political considerations into account in their distribution.

There will be no duplication when you got to the actual fieldwork. It would be Mr. Andrews and his administration who audit and certify the disbursement of this money pursuant to foreign policy directives of the Secretary of State. That is my understanding of the picture.

Mrs. BOLTON. It is your feeling, then, very strongly that the overall grant of this money would leave the Government free to revalue projects and use it to the very best advantage, rather than being hidebound or hamstrung by having it allocated in various areas?

Mr. GARDINER. The last thing we would like to have happen would be to say that $25 million of this money belongs to country X. We want these people to come forward either in a group-which is possible or singly, and say, "We have a good project which will result in these benefits. We can get some of our own money and maybe can get some from the bank. Will you help us out and provide the other funds required and some of the technicians, public or private?" Mrs. BOLTON. You think they will do that?

Mr. GARDINER. I think they will do that and I feel we should have a chance in the executive department to try to work that out because if we do not have this money, we are men of straw.

I suggest that these are appropriate fields for this kind of money and you will wait a long time to get private capital to develop the Jordan River.

I think I have covered most of my topics except to just refer briefly again to our request for the authorization for the U. N. fund. We

have had exhaustive Senate hearings on that subject. The point is that if we do have good luck and good fortune with our negotiations with the Arab States it might well be that we will be short to the extent of $30 million of funds which are needed and which we might seek in the next session as a deficiency rather than waiting for a year from now. We would like to have that authority. We do not intend at this session to ask for the appropriation. That would be, if like, an expression of congressional concern with the problem. I think we have given a reasonably good account of ourselves. Lord knows it is not perfect.

you

Mr. JAVITS. It is my understanding, and I hope it will figure in your work, that the Israeli Government has stated to the United Nations that it is prepared to make some pretty substantial payments on these Arab properties to aid Arab resettlement. Now, is that

correct?

Mr. GARDINER. They have stated that they would consider compensation outside of the context of the general peace settlement. That statement has been made in the United Nations by the authorities of the Government of Israel.

Mr. VORYS. Outside what?

Mr. GARDINER. For a long while they would consider compensation only in terms of an overall peace settlement. Now, they are willing to talk compensation without a general peace settlement. In other words, they will deal with this particular aspect of the refugee problem. They say that whether or not the Arab States as a whole make peace with them.

Mr. JAVITS. May I say something off the record to my colleagues? (The then following remarks were not reported.)

Mr. JUDD. May I ask a question about a sentence in your basic statement? You say:

The United States share of the contribution to date

this is talking about the U. N. aid

amounts to 61 percent of total receipts in cash, kind, and reserves

Mr. GARDINER. And services.

Mr. JUDD. In what forms have our contributions been ?

Mr. GARDINER. They have been in cash but it has resulted in shipments of merchandise from this country.

Mr. JUDD. Have we given any contributions besides cash?

Mr. GARDINER. No.

Mr. JUDD. In the UNICEF operation we found on our side they figured only cash and on the other side they figured cash and everything else. I wanted to make sure this was 61 percent of total contributions of all kinds.

Mrs. BOLTON. Have you looked into the questions I asked about yesterday?

Mr. GARDINER. Mrs. Bolton, you asked two questions yesterday, one about the Israel land agitation, where you were informed steps had been taken to make it legal to dispossess Arab residents from their property. My information from the documents of the State Department, which are recent dispatches from Tel Aviv, dated May 4, are to the effect that this law does not apply to resident Arabs. What is happening is that they are arranging to take over in bureaucratic channels the land that they describe as abandoned land.

And it does not affect, as the Jewish newsletter indicated, the rights of resident Arabs; our embassy has been informed to that effect by the Israeli foreign office.

Mrs. BOLTON. How much involvement does that have on the fact that they will not permit Arabs to come back who own that land?

Mr. GARDINER. I presume that means that they hope to settle Jewish farmers on that land and make it productive for Israel; land that is now nonproductive; and that they would compensate the Arabs along the lines that Mr. Javits brought up.

Mrs. BOLTON. But, no compensation can compensate for your home, particularly when you have half of it and you sit there and watch the other half. I mean the human feelings.

Mr. GARDINER. I understand that. You cannot put a dollar sign on that.

Mr. JAVITS. It is pretty rough.

Mrs. BOLTON. And I also want to ask if you would give me that earlier citizenship law, if you would go back to that.

You see a year or so ago it was passed and there was a great deal of hue and cry about it because it made it almost impossible for an Arab to be a full citizen and it violated absolutely according to 3 or 4, not just 1, 3 or 4 different publications.

Mr. GARDINER. I am sorry I did not look into that.

Mrs. BOLTON. I did not ask you about that, but I have had occasion just since I saw you yesterday to need to know and I would be very grateful if I might have that.

Mr. GARDINER. We will be happpy to look into it.

Mr. JAVITS. I would be terribly interested in that, too, because there are Arab deputies and I understood they were all equal ranking citizens.

Mrs. BOLTON. I was very troubled about it.

Mr. JAVITS. I would like to join in that request. I would like very

much to get it.

Mr. GARDINER. We will supply that to the committee staff. (The information requested is as follows:)

[These translations were made by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and were furnished the Embassy as authoritative English translations of the original Hebrew laws]

LAW OF RETURN, 5710-19501

1. Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an "oleh" (plural, Olim : a Jew immigrating to Israel permanently.-Translater).

2. (a) Aliyah shall be by oleh's visa.

(b) An oleh's visa shall be granted to every Jew who expresses his desire to settle in Israel, unless the Minister of Immigration is satisfied that the applicant

(1) is acting against the Jewish people, or

(2) is likely to endanger public health or the security of the state.

3. (a) A Jew who comes to Israel and subsequent to his arrival expresses his desire to settle in Israel is entitled, while in Israel, to receive an oleh's certificate. (b) The restrictions specified in Section 2 (b) shall also apply to the grant of an oleh's certificate, but a person shall not be considered to be endangering public health on account of an illness contracted after his arrival in Israel.

4. Every Jew who came to this country as an Oleh before the coming into force of this law and every Jew born in this country, whether before or after the coming into force of this Law, shall have the same status as a person who comes to this country as an oleh under this Law.

1 Reshumot, Sefer Ha Hukkim, No. 51 of 6 July 1950, p. 159.