Cop Report Foresees Great Gap Between Income of Jewish and Arab States

The majority report of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine foresees that the Jewish state will have an income, excluding customs, of 60 percent of its expenditures during the first year of the two-year transition period, while the Arab state’s income during the same period would total only 16 percent of its expenditures. However, the custom duties would tend to wipe out most of the deficit, according to the report (the full text of which was scheduled to be released tonight at Lake Success.)

The anticipated revenue of the Jewish state during the period 1947-48, not including income from customs, would be about $20,000,000, with expenditures of some $34,000,000, leaving a deficit of $14,000,000. The Arab state revenue, in the same period, is foreseen as about $6,000,000, with expenditures of $37,000,000, or a deficit of $31,000,000.

The UNSCOP majority estimates that the revenue of Jerusalem, in the aforementioned period, would be in the neighborhood of $4,500,000, with expenditures of $12,000,000, or, in other words, leaving a deficit of around $7,000,000. The partition advocates, however, point out that anet revenue from customs and other services should equal about $45,000,000, of which, according to this plan, between five and ten percent would go to Jerusalem, with the remainder equally divided between the Jewish and Arab states — meaning that the anticipated deficits would be sharply cut.

In addition, the $128,000,000 expended by the Palestine Government last year for police and other security services would presumably be cut under partition, and thus both states would be expected to emerge with small deficits.

DESCRIBES “PROFOUND TENSION” IN COUNTRY AND SEMI-MILITARY REGIME

Describing Palestine today, the UNSCOP report says that “the atmosphere there is one of profound tension. In many respects, the country is living under a semi-military regime. In the streets of Jerusalem and in other key areas, barbed-wire defenses, road-blocks, machine-gun posts and constant armored-car patrols are routine. In (certain) security areas the Administration officials and military forces move within police security zones and work within fortified and closely guarded buildings. Freedom of personal movement is liable to be severely restricted, and the curfew and martial law become a not uncommon experience.

“The primary purpose of the Palestine Government, in these circumstances,” the report adds, “is to maintain what it regards as the essential conditions to public security. There is no doubt that the enforcement of the 1939 White Paper has created throughout the Jewish community a deep-seated distrust of and resentment against the mandatory Power.” At the same time, the report remarks that under the mandate there has been a unified administration, general freedom of trade, a common transport system, a single currency and some development of public services in the interests of the population as a whole.

“In developing Jewish economy through a great investment of capital, the Jewish immigration profoundly affected Arab life by increasing money income and the extent to which the Arabs became concerned in the economy. Competition on the part of the Arabs also had a share in raising the Arab standard of life. Nevertheless, economic relations between the two groups have something of the character of trade between different nations.

“The Jews brought to Palestine agriculture both capital and skill, which together had a profound effect on the country, transforming parts of it from a waste and neglected land to fruitful ground. It may truly be said that they made the desert blossom as a rose.’ In this enterprise they may have been impelled by the (##) of an ideal which has come to realization in the communal, cooperative and individual settlements.”

Describing Palestine under the mandate, the report terms the Yishuv “a highly organized closely knit society which, partly on the basis of communal efforts, has (##)ed a national life completely enough to merit a Royal Commission’s title, A State (##)n A State.’ Proud of its achievements, self-government and cultural life, it is (##)tive to any apparent lack of appreciation of what it regards as its just and resonable needs.

“Its initiative, compositeness and self-control react strongly against the (##)ation in which it finds itself under an alien bureaucracy. Its memory of the (##) uprising of 1936 and 1939, and the more recent anti-Jewish pogroms in the Middle Eastern countries, coupled with the immediate background of Hitlerism, keeps it constantly vigilant and preoccupied with adequate defense of the national home.”