Yugoslav Unscop Delegate Advocates Secession if Palestine Federation Unworkable

The right of either the Jewish or Arab areas of Palestine to secede from a federal state, if federation proves unfeasible, is ad?ted by Vladimir Simic, Yugoslav delegate to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, in a special 12,000-word annex to the UNSCOP report just submitted to take Success. Simic was one of the three-man minority which recommended federation as preferable to partition.

In what might be called a bill of particulars against the British execution of the old League of Nations mandate, Dr. Simic’s document charges that under the British Mandate there is a deliberate and planned effort to deepen the gulf between Jews and Arabs. He asserts that he found in Palestine “a conflict between the ##datory and the peoples,” with the mandatory, he charges, “taking measures usually ##racteristic of the attitude a conquereror adopts in a conquered country.”He hands up an indictment of Britain for setting up what he called a police state in Palestine, pointing out that this year there has been one soldier in the country for every 13 Palestine inhabitants. He added in his one-man report: “There are reasons for believing that the maintenance of such large forces has not been caused alone by the difficult situation in the country. Among his charges against Britain: ##

2. Britain has made no advances in the development of self-governing institutions; and

3. That the entire structure of the government established in Palestine, both on the local and the central government levels, is calculated to impede rather than promote the development of any form of self-government

SAYS MANDATORY HAS NOT TRIED TO ENCOURAGE LOCAL AUTONOMY

The Yugoslav member of UNSCOP adds that Britain had made no real efforts to encourage local autonomy in Palestine, and that it was this absence of self-governing institutions, together with the British failure to develop the country along democratic lines, that has prevented the creation of conditions in which the Jews and Arabs in the mandate might have come together and settled all outstanding questions–even that of a Jewish national home, the Yugoslav member asserted.

“How can people be expected to cooperate,” he asked, “when there is no responsible governing body for them to cooperate in? How can they be expected successfully to bridge the gulf, which has been dividing them, when a third party is constantly stepping in between them in the role of arbitor? How can genuinely democratic forces, which are alone capable of achieving cooperation and progress be expected to come to the fore when the existing backward relationship of social and political forces is frozen by a crown colony type of government? We, therefore, cannot but agree with Ben Gurion when he says that ‘the mandatory failed not because Jews and Arabs do not cooperate, but because the mandatory refused to cooperate’.”

Dr. Simic adds that whatever differences of opinion exist as to why the mandate failed, opinion is virtually unanimous that it has failed, and that it is recognized by the mandatory power itself. Continuation of the mandate, he asserted, would mean constant and rapid deterioration of conditions in Palestine, and would make any settlement of the problem even more difficult than it is today. He placed blame for chauvinism, however, on both parties, but pointed out that that attitude was engendered by the undemocratic conditions under which the mandate was administered.