On this day—October 11, 1949 Egypt’s foreign minister admitted the demand for the return of refugees who fled the war had nothing to do with their homes. It was about destroying the Jewish state they had just failed to annihilate in war. Dr. Mohammed Salah al-Din wrote in Al Misri: “In demanding the restoration of the refugees to Palestine, the Arabs intend that they shall return as the masters of the homeland and not as slaves. More explicitly, they intend to annihilate the State of Israel.” The armistice was only months old. Israel had just fought a war in which five Arab armies and local Arabs tried to erase it and throw the Jews into the sea. The local Arabs who left had been told by their own leaders that the victory would be quick and that they would return behind the advancing armies. When that did not happen, the same governments that had launched the war insisted on the return of people they had encouraged to leave, while refusing to make peace. Israeli officials told the Palestine Conciliation Commission that an unrestricted return while the Arab states remained at war would put a fifth column inside the lines. The concern was very real. Cross-border raids were already ongoing. Meanwhile, Arab papers were in lockstep about the reason for demanding return, but in even plainer language. A Lebanese weekly wrote that the refugees should be sent back so they could serve as “a fifth column for the day of revenge and reckoning.” The refugees were not a humanitarian issue to the Arab states. They were the next weapon against Israel. They ensured refugees would be kept in camps and on the UN dole rather than absorb them and give them new lives. They used the camps as a permanent claim and a recruiting ground in their forever war against Israel. Israel made offers for return, but only in return for peace treaties with their Arab neighbors. Every Arab state balked. Even so, Israel took back tens of thousands under family-reunification schemes in the years after 1949. The refugees were never a humanitarian problem the Arab governments were trying to solve. They were the new means by which they would continue their war of annihilation against Israel.