Declaring that he saw no “evidence of friction or disagreement between the Arab and Jewish people” in Palestine, Dr. Gustavo Gutierrez, former president of Cuba’s Chamber of Deputies and ex-Secretary of Justice, minimized the “much-touted Arab-Jewish ‘tinder box'” as a propaganda instrument of the wealthy Arab land-owner class. Dr. Gutierrez returned today from a trip to Palestine where he had been sent as a special envoy of the Cuban Government.
“If Arabs and Jews were left to their own councils, they could settle the Palestine problem wisely and permanently,” the Cuban statesman declared at a press conference. He was of the opinion that “both groups were sincerely interested in getting along with one another and were confident that a settlement could be reached.”
The Latin-American diplomat stated that the British were hastily converting Palestine into an “impregnable fortress” and were planning to use that land as a bastion for their Suez defenses. “There seems to be no doubt but that Palestine will be able to absorb any number of incoming settlers into its land economy,” he declared. “The Jewish Agency has been laying blue-prints for a long time for such an eventuality, and could accommodate many more than 100,000 refugees envisaged by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
