An attempt by a Palestine Government official to confiscate important papers connected with the projected Jordan Valley Authority was revealed here by Emanuel Neumann, chairman of the Commission on Palestine Surveys.
Dr. Neumann, who has just returned from Palestine where he submitted the JVA plan to the Anglo-American inquiry committee, said that while he was at Lydda airfield, waiting to board a plane for London, he was asked by a Government official to allow his luggage to be inspected. When the official found numerous documents dealing with the JVA project, he informed Dr. Neumann that they would have to impound them.
The Zionist leader protested that he had brought most of the material with him from the United States and declared that he would not leave without it, but was told that “those are my orders from Jerusalem.” He was finally permitted to leave without surrendering the papers. He attributed the incident to statements he made while in Palestine which were critical of British rule there.
Reporting that the Palestine Government had submitted “unsigned” memoranda to the Anglo-American committee severely criticizing the JVA plan, Dr. Neuman said that James B. Hays and John L. Savege, the American engineers who designed the project, had refuted the memoranda before the committee and expressed “amazement and distress that such memoranda were submitted by persons who evidently had no experience with such large-scale projects.”
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