Moshe Shertok, chief of the political department of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and representative of the Agency’s executive in Washington, said today that there was “no real prospect of an agreed solution” of the impasse in Palestine last October, as Foreign Secretary Bevin asserted in his House of Commons speech yesterday.
Declaring himself “baffled and bewildered by the version of the October negotiations” presented by Bevin to Commons, Shertok said that “I do not see how anything could have interfered with the chances of an agreed solution which, to my mind, were non-existent. It is not surprising,” he declared, “that Bevin thinking as he does and advised as he is, cannot solve the problem. What is odd is that he should blame his failure on others.”
Recently returned from London where he participated in the informal Jewish Agency talks with Bevin and Colonial Secretary Creech-Jones, Shertok will leave next Wednesday for Jerusalem to attend a meeting of the executive and the Zionist Actions Committee. In the meantime he was conferring here today with Dr. Abba Hillel Silver and Dr. Emanuel Neumann on matters concerning the effect of Bevin’s address.
DOUBTS WHETHER JEWISH AGENCY WILL RENEW TALKS WITH BEVIN
Referring to Bevin’s hint of a possibility of further talks looking toward a solution, outside the United Nations, Shertok said that in his personal opinion, and without formally committing the Executive, he sees “very little likelihood of the Executive re-engaging in any talks, and thereby lending itself to a game of precrastination, so long as there is no tangible change in the position on Palestine.”
The Agency has no quarrel whatever with the new departure of the British Government in deciding to lay the Palestine problem before the U.N., Shertok declared. He added that if the matter is referred to the U.N., the Agency “will do everything in its power to uphold and defend the internationally recognized rights of Jews in Palestine.”
Shertok emphasized the “crucial urgency” of an interim policy pending referral to the U.N. and subsequent U.N. action. He specified immediate admission of the 100,000 refugees, and abrogation of the land laws as “no more than an act of restitution” by the British. “They cannot in one and the same breath flout international authority by violating the mandate and swear allegiance to it by submitting to the judgment of the U.N.,” he said. “If Britain desires to lay its trust before the high international body, it must restore it intact and undistorted by all the violations contained in the White Paper of 1939 and enforced today.”
AGENCY WOULD DEFER CLAIM TO STATEHOOD IF MANDATE OBSERVED
The Agency would defer its claim to statehood, Shertok said, if the British would return to the “status quo ante-1937,” when, he declared, they first began violating the mandate. He sees little hope however, “that those of the British Cabinet who are in effective control of Palestine policy will easily be persuaded to effect these changes. Playing for time has been their guiding principle, pursued with inexhaustible ingenuity, at the expense of the peace of Palestine and the rescue of our European remnants.”
Bevin’s assertion that the Arabs might agree to admission of the 100,000 if the Jews abandoned their claim to statehood was characterized by Shertok as “quite a revelation.” Irrespective of whether the Arabs might or might not agree, he said, “the Jews will never accept the position that their return to Palestine should be subject to Arab consent.
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.
