Arab, Jewish Spokesmen at Youth Congress Voice People’s Mutual Friendship

Arab and Jewish delegates from Palestine expressed the mutual friendship of their peoples and held up the struggle for democratic rights as a common meeting ground for the two races in a discussion of minority problems and peaceful change at a session of the World Youth Congress here this morning.

While disagreeing on the relative positions of the Arabs and Jews in Palestine both speakers outlined similar objectives. Rey khuri, the Arab speaker, declared himself in favor of full rights for the Jewish population of Palestine as a democratic minority, but warned them against becoming the “tool” of British imperialism and thereby coming into conflict with the “basic hopes and ideals” of the Arab population and jeopardizing their own best interests. Their rights, he said, can be assured only by fullest cooperation with the Arab population, for they have as much to fear as the Arabs from their British “protectors.”

Speaking for the Palestine League of Nations Society, Maurice Bouckstein denounced the interpretation of Palestine’s problems as “clash between Jewish and Arab nationalism.” He asserted that it was in reality a conflict “between progress and the status quo.” Mr. Bouckstein, a New York attorney and secretary of the American Economic Committee for Palestine, cited past Arab recognition of the Zionist movement as evidence that the “Jewish people have no quarrel with the Arab people.”