Office of the Historian

138. Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy0

Washington, January 23, 1963.

Here is BG’s highly skillful reply to your Palm Beach talk with Golda. State feels as I do that BG’s conditional “yes” on refugees is in fact a flat “no”.

By making Israeli agreement to a refugee plan conditional upon prior working out of a total, final solution which must be firmly accepted beforehand by the Arabs, BG has posed impossible conditions. The Johnson Plan was based on tacit Arab acquiescence to a creeping process on the grounds that this was the utmost we could get the Arabs to accept. Nasser, for example, might tacitly agree to a 100,000 limit on repatriation but he could never do so openly, for fear the other Arabs would hang him.

Before abandoning ourselves to unrelieved pessimism we’ll talk with Harman on return, but I see little give.

R. W. Komer1
  1. Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Countries Series, Israel, 1/21/63–1/31/63. Secret. Komer sent Bundy this memorandum and telegrams 537 (Document 137) and 538 from Tel Aviv, under cover of a note that reads: “Don’t you think JFK ought to see this with my comment before Mike gets to him? It’s one of the most artful “no sales’ I’ve seen.” Bundy wrote on the note: “pass original to Mrs. Lincoln for Pres.” Another handwritten notation indicates: “done.” (Ibid.) For telegram 538 from Tel Aviv, January 22, see the Supplement, the compilation on the Arab-Israeli dispute.↩
  2. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩