reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinian-Arab nation which should be the beginning rather than the result of peace in the Region. We offered a detailed plan based on the following principles:
1) Israel recognizes the principle of the right of the Arab refugees to return to Israeli territory.
2) Every refugee should be asked, as an individual, to make a free choice between repatriation and compensation.
3) The refugees opting for return will be repatriated over a period of ten years under an annual quota, each year a tenth returning.
4) The repatriates would be settled and provided with new means of livelihood in the cities and villages, much as Jewish immigrants are. (The refugees could not be returned to their former individual homes, most of which have long ceased to exist, without dislocating hundreds of thousands of citizens and upsetting the whole economy of the country.)
5) Returning refugees would automatically become Israeli citizens, enjoying all civil rights.
6) Compensation, to those relinquishing the right to return, would be according to a scale fixed in advance. Payments would be in hard currency, and would cover abandoned property, as well as loss of livelihood, education, and so forth.
7) The cost of resettlement and compensation would be financed by international funds.
8) The whole scheme would be a unilateral Israeli operation, without foreign interference, and not conditional on any political settlement.
9) The Arab refugees would be invited to set up a representative body to cooperate with Israel in the realization of this plan.
We expected that under such a scheme, many of the refugees, probably the majority, would opt for compensation and settlement in the Arab world, with the minority opting for return. It was a practical and ideal solution,