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1948 Arab–Israeli War

I suggest you read WP:V. It's a core policy of Misplaced Pages. The threshold for inclusion of material in an article is that it was published by reliable secondary sources, not our own interpretation of primary sources. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 08:16, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

A minor correction is in order. You certainly may use any analysis or interpretations that have been reliably published in primary sources. WP:PSTS only applies to unpublished original research done by Misplaced Pages editors.

In Robert Donovan, "Conflict and crisis: the presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948, University of Missouri Press, 1996,ISBN 082621066X, page 382 the author wrote that Under Secretary Lovett was asked to provide the President's Legal Counsel, Clark Clifford, an advisory opinion from a senior legal counsel at the State Department, Ernest Gross. It was used by the President and his staff in making decisions regarding US recognition of the newly partitioned states in Palestine. It was decided that neither state would be recognized if it attempted to form a unitary state governing all of Palestine or tried to obtain more territory than had been agreed upon in the international forum. There are a number of published accounts which say that Ben Gurion and the Provisional Council had decided to leave the matter of borders "open to developments". In Simha Flapan, "The birth of Israel: myths and realities", Pantheon Books, 1987, page 35 the author wrote that Ben Gurion was very displeased when he discovered that Elihu Epstein's request for US recognition contained a stipulation that Israel had been established within the boundaries of the 29 November UN resolution. Years later Clark Clifford, wrote an account explaining that he had personally insisted upon that written clarification regarding Israel's borders.

Here is the account via the JCPA: "Epstein was ecstatic. He did not realize that the President had still not decided how to respond to the request I had just solicited. It was particu­larly important, I said, that the new state claim nothing beyond the boundaries outlined in the UN resolution of November 29, 1947, be­cause those boundaries were the only ones which had been agreed to by everyone, including the Arabs, in any international forum.

A few minutes later, Epstein called back: "We've never done this before, and we're not quite sure how to go about it. Could you give us some advice?" I told him that I would check with the experts and get back to him... ...I asked Epstein to be sure the letter explicitly referred to the November 29 UN resolu­tion. the JCPA harlan (talk) 22:49, 15 March 2011 (UTC)