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Arab Moderates Repudiate Delegates Selected by Extremists

January 25, 1939
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A few hours before the delegations of Palestine Arabs and neighboring Arab states were scheduled to sail for London, dissension broke out anew today between Palestine moderates and extremists over representation in the delegation to the forthcoming conferences on Palestine. Yacoub Faraj and Nemr el Nabulsi, who were selected by Premier Nuri Pasha es-Said of Iraq in conference at Beirut with extremist leader Haj Amin el Husseini, exiled ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, as representatives of the Arab moderates were repudiated by the moderate Arab National Defense Party.

Ragheb Bey Nashashibi, ex-mayor of Jerusalem and leader of the party, insisted that the party had the right to choose its own delegates. In Jerusalem, a delegation of the party, headed by Fakhri Bey Nashashibi, mayor of Bethlehem and acting head of the party, who is the cousin of Ragheb Bey, visited High Commissioner Sir Harold A. MacMichael and informed him that the party did not consider itself as represented at the London parleys.

A spokesman for the Arab extremists, Auni Bey Abdul Hadi, stated that the two delegates were satisfactory representatives of the moderate faction and that their nomination assured the representation of all groups at the London negotiations. The selection of two Arabs as nominal representatives of the moderates was made by the extremists on Sunday after the British Government had demanded that the moderates be given representation in the delegation.

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