ABSTRACT
While soundings continued in Washington, London and Cairo about the feasibility of the Gaza proposal, the delegations in Lausanne continued their manoeuvring and shadow-boxing without progress and amid increasing frustration. 1 On his last day in Lausanne before returning home to the United States, Mark Ethridge reported 'no progress' in reconciling Arab and Israeli positions. Ethridge left Lausanne 'in a mood of great bitterness', mostly against the Israelis, although, Walter Eytan conceded, 'fairminded enough to admit that the Arabs' attitude was unrealistic'.2 The head of the Israeli delegation, for his part, was weary of the PCC's 'idee fixe' regarding the Israeli position, which he characterized as follows:
If only you [Israelis] would accept the principle of repatriation, everything would be fine and dandy, and we'd get along like a house on fire. But as long as you maintain your obstinate, stubborn, rigid (choose your epithet) refusal, we are in no position to get the Arabs talking on other things, and there's no prospect of peace. You - Israel - are the ones who are preventing peace, and it's no good your saying you want peace. We don't believe you, because if you really want peace, you know how to get it. All you have to do is to declare your acceptance of the repatriation principle. 3
At one point in June 1949 Eytan confessed that he was 'sorely tempted' to call the Arabs' 'bluff' by accepting the principle of repatriation, contingent on numerous provisos. In the end, however, the Israeli delegation kept closely to the official line that the return of refugees could not be considered separately from an overall peace settlement. 4 Israeli tactics at the conference consisted of bombarding the PCC with paperwork aimed at 'undermin[ing] the Protocol of 12 May, which [Israel] had signed only under ... duress'.5 In the second half of June, the head of the Israeli delegation submitted a series of formal letters to the PCC, including the long-awaited official - but hardly sympathetic - reply to the Arab delegations' nine-point memorandum of 18 May.6
