Israel's Founding Father: David Ben-Gurion Interview (1957)

On 18 July 1957, Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was interviewed by ITN's George Ffitch. He discussed the prospects for peace in the region and the threat to Israel posed by the Arab states of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. When asked about the right of Palestinian refugees to resettle in Israel, Ben-Gurion gave an answer that summed up the intractable dilemma faced by the state of Israel as well as the international community of Palestinian refugees:

"If they want to come back to their land, I can't see the reason why they left their land. We didn't compel them to leave, they left on their own will, or rather on the will of the Arab leaders... meanwhile the land was settled by refugees – Jewish refugees from Arab countries, and by Jewish refugees, the remnants of the six million slaughtered by Nazis. They cannot come back unless we expel those from this country, and we are not going to do that."

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