Prime Minister Clement Attlee said today that he was not in a position to make any statement concerning the British Government’s proposals on Palestine. He told Commons that the Government was now in contact with the U.S. Government and, therefore, he could not make any comment.
A Foreign Office spokesman today declared that the British Government had not yet received the reply of the Jewish Agency to the invitation of Britain and the United States to comment on the report of the Anglo-American inquiry committee. (The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported the highlights of the Jewish Agency statement Monday). The same spokesman refused to divulge the names of the British committee of experts conferring with a four-man American group of State and War Department specialists on the technical problems involved in implementing the inquiry committee’s recommendations.
Attlee’s statement in Commons was occasioned by questions from Barnett Janner, Labor M.P., on what steps the British Government was taking to facilitate the transfer of 100,000 Jews from Europe to Palestine, Janner was joined by Samuel Silverman, also a Laborite, who declared that the delay in implementing the immigration recommendation was pushing the displaced Jews to a point “beyond human endurance.” Col. Oliver Stanley, Conservative and former Colonial Minister, said that the present “grave” events in Palestine made a Government decision “urgent.”
It was revealed today that the British Government has received a note from the Arab League denouncing the proposals of the inquiry committee. The League said: the immigration of 100,000 Jews to Palestine is incompatible with the country’s economic capacity; it would not cooperate in “economic projects liable to lead to expansion of Zionism;” it questioned the validity of the Palestine Mandate; and it warned that implementation of the inquiry committee’s recommendations might lead to disturbances in Palestine and elsewhere in the Middle East.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
