He reported that Israel's target date for achieving nuclear capability was 1968–1969.[254] On May 1, 1968, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach told President Johnson that Dimona was producing enough plutonium to produce two bombs a year. The State Department argued that if Israel wanted arms, it should accept international supervision of its nuclear program.[249] Dimona was never placed under IAEA safeguards. Attempts to write Israeli adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) into contracts for the supply of U.S. weapons continued throughout 1968.[255]
Israeli national interests to an extent were also at odds with Kennedy's endorsement of the United Nation's Johnson Plan, which devised a plan to return a small percentage of displaced Palestinians from the war of 1948 into what was by then, Israel. This continuation of the late UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold's plan for Palestinian repatriation particularity disturbed persons who had a hard line view of even Arab resettlement in Israel, or the more heavily feared, full repatriation. The Johnson plan was spearheaded by the Palestine Conciliation Commission's Dr. Joseph Ersey Johnson, while the United Nations attempted to oversee progression from writing - into action.
