Implying that people in America insist on the admission of 100,000 displaced Jews to Palestine “because they do not want too many of them in New York,” Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin made a passionate plea today before the annual convention of the British Labor Party now in session here, urging the rejection of a resolution on Palestine introduced yesterday by various leaders of the party.
The resolution, which asked for the lifting of restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine and land acquisition there, was withdrawn following Bevin’s address. He indicated that Britain is not inclined to accept the recommendation of the Anglo-American inquiry committee to admit 100,000 European Jews to Palestine immediately.
“If we put 100,000 Jews in Palestine tomorrow,” he said, “I would have to put another division of British troops there. I am not prepared to do it. I must say to the Jews and the Arabs: ‘Please, put your guns away. Don’t blow up the British today who is quite innocent in this business. You are creating another place of anti-Semitic feeling in the British Army.'”
Speaking of American interest in securing the admission of 100,000 displaced Jews to Palestine, Bevin stated: “The agitation in the United States, and particularly, in New York, for 100,000 Jews to be put in Palestine–and I do not want the Americans to misunderstand me–is because they do not want too many of them in New York.”
ADVOCATES “ARBITRATION TRIBUNAL” TO SETTLE LAND PROBLEMS IN PALESTINE
After expressing gratitude to the Government of the United States for joining with Britain “in grappling with this problem,” Bevin said that the more he studied land development in Palestine and Transjordan and the possibility of fertilizing it, the more he was convinced that there would have to be a joint decision to have the land publicly owned and allocated on lease by an arbitration tribunal.
“The Palestine problem,” he told the convention, “is a terrific problem. Really it is a Colonial Office problem, but I recognize that you cannot longer leave it as a colonial problem. It is international, and I came to the conclusion that the more wiping out of the White Paper will not lead very far.”
Stressing that the land problem in Palestine is “paramount,” Bevin suggested that in order to carry out the Lowdermilk Place, land must be publicly owned. “If you want to raise Arab life equally to that of Jewish, you cannot do it by taking away all their land,” he said, adding that he does not believe in racial states.
“In Palestine they want a Palestinian State, so that their voice can be heard a the chancellories of the world. That is what I am trying to do. It is going to take patience and work to accomplish it,” he asserted. He expressed the belief that Palestine Jewish “brains” will be welcomed by the Arabs all over the world. He reiterat- ed that “Jews must not be hounded out of Europe” and that “we must strive to see that Jews in the country of adoption observe the laws of the country.”
Harold Laski, chairman of the Labor Party executive, insisted on an early transfer of the 100,000 Jews to Palestine. “Neither Arab blackmail, nor strategic policy in the Middle East should make homeless wanderers the victims of hesitation and timidity of our Downing Street,” he declared. “Any British statesman who is sacrificing Jews who escaped the tortures of Hitlerism to Arab leaders, undermines the elementary principles of Socialism which he professes.”
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