Arabs Plan Campaign Against British Policy

Arab plans for a concerted campaign of protest against British policy in Palestine were revealed today as the Palestine Partition Commission began a tour of the country. Arab newspapers said that demonstrations would be held throughout Palestine and other countries of the Near East. At the same time Arab leaders would flood Jerusalem and London with telegrams protesting the proposed partition of Palestine as well as Britain’s Palestine policy in general.

Disclosure of the plans followed anti-British and anti-Zionist demonstrations yesterday in Damascus, Aleppo, Sidon, Tyre, Homs, Hama, Beirut, Baghdad, Cairo, and Alexandria.

The authorities forbade newspapers to report Arab strikes in protest against the commission. Nevertheless, Falastin, Christian Arabic daily, reported strikes in Jenin, Acre, Haifa, Safed and Nazareth. Arab disorders continued, with heavy attacks on the settlements of Kfar Menahem and Givat Ade beaten off. Workers outside the Degania Bakery in Tel Aviv were fired on from a speeding automobile, but were not hit.

Meanwhile, Moshe Shertok, head of the Jewish Agency’s political department, told Jewish workers from the Sharon section at a mass meeting at Raanana that the Jewish community was not a football of politics and would not yield the ownership of Palestine.

Many commissions have come to Palestine, he said, but the Yishub’s existence was not dependent on their words. It was not known whether the Partition Commission would begin by asking what was promised to the Jews in Palestine and what were the needs of Jewry, or what could be granted the Jews without irritating the Arabs, he declared, but if it was the latter, the Jews would seek the failure of the commission’s proposals.