Ferhat Abbas, the leader of the Algerian rebels, said today in his first statement on Algerian Jews, that the rebel organization considers the Jews as Algerians but that “discussions and evolutions on this subject are possible.”
The Prime Minister of the Algerian Provisional Government made the statement in an interview which appeared in the French newspaper “L’Express.” He told French writer Jules Roy that “the Algerian Revolution considers the Jews as Algerians” and that Algeria had always been “their homeland.”
Noting that “many of them want to become citizens of an Algerian Republic” and that some Jews “want to remain French,” the rebel leader declared: “What I can say is that we have unshakeable convictions only on what concerns the fundamental basis of the revolution. For everything else we are prepared to discuss and to solve. New situations can arise,” he added, “which we will study in a spirit of political realism which none can doubt.”
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