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Churchill Again Urges Britain to Give Up Palestine Mandate to U.n; Hits U.S. Inaction

October 24, 1946
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Former Prime Minister Winston Churchill today again urged the British Government to surrender its mandate for Palestine to the United Nations if it is unable to fulfill its pledge of creating a Jewish National Home there.

Speaking after Prime Minister Attles had made a statement on foreign policy in which his only reference to Palestine was to describe it as “one of the urgent world problems,” Mr. Churchill charged that the Labor Government had caused a tremendous amount of suffering because it had not adopted a decisive policy on Palestine. He deplored the fact that large military forces were engaged in “a squalid conflict with the Zionist community.”

Churchill criticized the United States, declaring that it was not right for the U.S. “not to take a share in solving the Palestine problem, and then reproach us for our obvious incapacity to cope with the problem.” He added that the mandate was the “most thankless task over undertaken by any country.”

BEVIN SAYS MUFTI BROKE PROMISE NOT TO ENGAGE IN POLITICS

Speaking in Commons earlier, Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin revealed that the British Ambassador in Cairo has complained to the Egyptian Government at the failure of the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem to keep his promise to refrain from political activity while in Egypt.

A Jewish Agency spokesman today welcomed the replacement of Lieut. Gen. Sir Evelyn Barker as British military commander in Palestine by Maj. Gen. G.H.A. MacMillan. “We hope this change in the regime will be followed by a change in personnel,” he said. Barker had been under fire on several occasions for his alleged anti-Semitism.

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