Mubarak accepted US request to settle Palestinians in Egypt, UK documents show

Donald Trump wasn’t the first US president to request that Egypt resettle Palestinians on its soil. More than four decades ago, Ronald Reagan’s administration made the same request to Hosni Mubarak, the late Egyptian president. Mubarak agreed to the proposal, British documents reveal.

The documents confirm that Mubarak informed the US that his acceptance was conditional on a broader settlement to the Middle East conflict.

In February 1983, Mubarak discussed the issue with the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during his visit to London on his way back from Washington where he met with Reagan.

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) showed that before their formal plenary talks, Mubarak requested a tete-a-tete with Thatcher with the presence of no-one else. During this bilateral meeting, which lasted for 45 minutes, Mubarak discussed in detail some issues that “he repeated in summary forms during the full talks”, Thatcher’s private secretary said in a note.

Mubarak’s visits to Washington and London came eight months after Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982, alleging that its military operation against the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) fighters is a response to the attempted assassination of the Israeli Ambassador to Britain, Shlomo Argov, by the Palestinian Abu Nidal Organisation.

The Israeli military then occupied southern Lebanon after large-scale attacks on the Palestinian fighters, the Syrian army and armed Islamic organisations in the country.

At the beginning of the occupation, the Israelis besieged the PLO and some units of the Syrian army in west Beirut. After the intervention of Philip Habib, the US special envoy to the Middle East, the PLO withdrew from west Beirut after the massive destruction caused by the Israeli military operation.

[British National Archive]

[British National Archive]

[British National Archive]

[British National Archive]

Concluding that the situation in the Middle East was extremely tense, Mubarak sought to convince the US and Israel to accept the establishment of a Palestinian entity within the framework of a confederation with Jordan as a prelude to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the future. In his talks with Thatcher, he presented his vision for a settlement in the Middle East.

Mubarak “said that when he had been asked earlier to accept Palestinians from Lebanon, he told the United States that he could do so as part of a comprehensive framework for a solution,” minutes from the talks reveal.

Mubarak expressed his readiness to receive Palestinians from Lebanon in Egypt, despite his awareness of the risks involved in such a move.

He informed Thatcher that he “told (Philip) Habib that by making the Palestinians leave Lebanon, the United States risked causing dozens of difficult problems in various countries.”

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Thatcher warned that any potential future Palestinian state will not grant the Palestinians, who forcibly fled after the establishment of Israel in 1948, their right to return to their homes in Palestine as the UN resolution states.

“Even the establishment of a Palestinian state could not lead to the absorption of the whole Palestinians in the diaspora,” she said.

However, Dr. Boutros Boutros Ghali, Egypt’s then-minister of state for foreign affairs, said: “The Palestinians would, however, then have their own passports, and will take different attitudes.”

“We should in fact have not just an Israeli state and a Jewish diaspora, but a small Palestinian state and a Palestinian diaspora,” he added.

The documents show that discussions did not address the conditions of the remaining Palestinian refugees outside Palestine.

All political factions in Lebanon reject the idea of settling Palestinians on Lebanese soil, insisting that their country will not become an alternative to the Palestinians’ right to return to their homes in accordance with the UN resolution.

After 19 years, the Lebanese government strongly refused pressure to have the Arab Summit held in Beirut in March 2002 approve the Arab Peace Initiative with Israel because it did not include the Palestinians’ right of return. Emile Lahoud, then-Lebanese president, warned that the initiative’s lack of a clause on the right of return would mean settling the Palestinians in Lebanon, which he said was unacceptable.

As a compromise, a requested clause was added calling for “a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194.” This resulted in the Arab leaders approving the initiative put forward by the late Prince Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz, the then-Saudi crown prince.

The British PM hinted to her support for the idea of a federation between Jordan and a Palestinian state. She said that this solution “is what most people envision.”

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Then-British Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, Lord Francis Pym, asked whether Israel, under a Labour government, would accept the concept of a small, demilitarised Palestinian state. Dr. Osama El-Baz, Mubarak’s political advisor, replied that “the first step should be a Palestinian entity united in a federation with Jordan”. He predicted that this “could evolve in ten to fifteen years to a demilitarised Palestinian state.”

Ghali thought that an Israeli Labor government “might be able to envisage such a development” which Thatcher characterised as “a radical change of policy”, raising “doubt” that such an Israeli government “could obtain acceptance from the Israeli people” of it.

In addition, she expressed reservations about the establishment of a Palestinian state independent of Jordan, saying: “Some feel that an independent Palestinian state might be subject to the domination of the Soviet Union.” However, Dr El-Baz refuted this fear as a “wrong perception”, arguing that a Palestinian state will never “be dominated by the Russians.”

He explained that such a state will depend economically on the oil-rich Arab states “who were vehemently opposed to the establishment in the area of a pro-Soviet state.” The Egyptian presidential advisor added that Saudi Arabia is an example of those states that will never allow this to happen. “Any Palestinian state must be demilitarized,” Al-Baz continued. Therefore, it “will not receive Soviet weapons.”

Mubarak supported Al-Baz’s perspective, saying that not a single Arab country would accept a Palestinian entity dominated by the Soviets.

To further reassure Thatcher, Mubarak added that “a Palestinian state will never be a threat to Israel”. He even expected the Palestinians in Kuwait and the rest of the Gulf “will never return to a Palestinian state.”

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.