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{
    "localId": "290016897",
    "label": "Letter from Dean Alfange to Major General Harry Vaughan, with a Letter from President Harry S. Truman to Dean Alfange",
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    "id": "290016897",
    "sourceUrl": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/290016897",
    "contentType": "document",
    "title": "Letter from Dean Alfange to Major General Harry Vaughan, with a Letter from President Harry S. Truman to Dean Alfange",
    "citationUrl": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/290016897",
    "collections": [
        "President's Secretary's Files (Truman Administration)",
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    "levelOfDescription": "item",
    "productionDates": [
        {
            "logicalDate": "1948-05-01",
            "month": 5,
            "year": 1948
        }
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{
    "seq": 3,
    "pageIndex": 0,
    "type": "photo",
    "url": "https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/presidential-libraries/truman/hst-psf/602191/750343/750343-12-003.tif",
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    "ocrText": "DEAN ALFANGE\nNINE EAST 40TH STREET\nNEW YORK\nwould also place the President in the commendable\nposition of strengthening the hand of the United\nNations.\nShould the President for any reason find this move\nill advised, the next best step would be to appoint\na personal Ambassador or special Emissary and send\nhim to Palestine with authority to negotiate a settle-\nment, on the basis of the UN decision, between the\nJewish Agency and King Abdullah of Transjordan. This\nmove would be timely and appropriate.\nIn the first place, the Arabs have been rudely awakened\nto the fact that they cannot dispose of the Jews as\neasily as they had thought. Abdullah is a realist\nand he knows right well that his vaunted Arab Legion,\nsome ten thousand mercenaries trained by the British,\nwould be no match for the Jewish forces which, I under-\nstand, number some seventy-five thousand excellently\ndisciplined and zealously devoted young men and women.\nAs a matter of fact I have been saying right along,\nand events are proving me right, that the combined\nforces of the whole Arab League would be no match for\nthis Jewish Army which, even when divided, succeeded\nin driving seven British divisions behind barbed wires.\nI am not a military man, but I think you will agree\nwith me that outside of Abdullah's Legion, there is\nno other well-equipped, well-trained Arab Army. More-\nover, the Arab chieftains are divided by deep rooted\nfeuds. The ex-Mufti, Haj Amin al Husseini detests\nAbdullah and Abdullah is not on speaking terms with\nIbn Saud who drove Abdullah's father, King Hus sein,\nthe Caliph, from his throne in Mecca. These feuds\npreclude any real unity on the part of leaders of the\nArab League.\nFor this reason, I suggest that negotiations be carried\non between the Jewish Agency and Abdullah, who is the\n-2-"
}