ABSTRACT
On 11 December 1948 the United Nations (UN) General Assembly set up a Conciliation Commission for Palestine. The Commission's principal functions were to assist the governments and authorities to achieve a final settlement of all outstanding questions, to ensure the protection of the Holy Places with guarantees of full access thereto, and to secure the demilitarization and the internationalization of Jerusalem. The Arabs generally stressed the importance of settling the refugee problem first; the Israelis would settle it only within the framework of a general peace settlement-after twenty years still the main aim of Israeli policy. Israel's territorial claims were for boundaries much wider than those of the Partition Plan and incorporated territories won during the 1948 war. The proposals were denounced by the Arabs as a flagrant violation of the terms of the Lausanne Protocol of 12 May 1949.
