Decision on Palestine Cannot Be Reached at San Francisco Parley, Says Weizmann

A decision on Palestine could not be reached at San Francisco even if the Jewish Agency were represented there, Dr. Chaim Weizmann said today in an interview appearing in the Manchester Guardian. The Zionist leader declared that a solution of the Palestine question rests entirely with the great powers, and above all Britain, because the Arabs will consider the case of the Jews only when it is projected with all the sympathy and authority of the major nations behind it.

Declaring that the time has come for a “real settlement,” Dr. Weizmann said that to perpetuate the present indeterminate position on Palestine by making slight concessions to Jews on immigration will lead nowhere and may merely aggravate matters. The problem presented to the great powers should be regarded as an opportunity for an act of great statesmanship, he added.

Dr. Weizmann pointed out that the Arabs prospered during the war – having home neither the pain nor the loss and having been enabled to increase their sovereign rights and form a federation – while European Jewry has been scattered and reduced by millions. The remnants of the Jewish populations of Europe, he continued, are without out a centre and a future, unless a future is assured them by the United Nations.

“The contrast between the two peoples,” the world Zionist leader continued, “should form the basis of an appeal by the great powers which, if uttered with sincerity and conviction, could not fail to rouse the world and sway the Arabs, too. If the Allies show that they are in earnest in judging what is just for the Jews, and will support the implications of such judgment, then there is nothing to prevent the realization of Jewish hopes for free immigration into Palestine, with the prospect of the national home becoming an independent, sovereign state.”

An editorial appearing in the Guardian today says that the Nazis almost entirely succeeded in their program of wiping out the Jews, and adds that the few survivors have little faith in the immediate coming of tolerance to Europe. It domands that the United Nations guard the rights of those survivors and rigerously suppress anti-Semitism. Britain, it says, must set an example for the world by a far more generous immigration policy and, at least, naturalize all refugees now here who whish to remain.

However, Palestine remains the chief hope of the Jews of Europe, the editorial states. It says that although the rights of the Arabs must be protected, the Jewish national home, built with British encouragement, cannot be abandoned, nor can Palestine be forever closed to the Jews of Europe. “In the long run,” the Guardian concludes, “the future of the Jews of Palestine is, to a certain extent, the future of the Jews of Europe and can be safeguarded only by the creation of a Jewish state in Europe. When the United Nations at San Francisco are drafting a program for the rights of man and the security of nations, the Jews cannot be forgotten.”