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British Maintained Radio Station at Cyprus Urged Arabs to Continue Fighting Jews

June 14, 1948
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The pro-government Sunday newspaper People today charged “certain British officials” with urging the Arabs to continue fighting after foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin officially announced that he was attempting to get the Arabs to accept the U.N. cease-fire. The newspaper reported that a Cyprus radio station, operated by the Foreign Office Information Department, featured an Arabic broadcast which suggested that the Arabs continue fighting and concentrate on capturing the Palestine coastal area to prevent shipments of American supplies from reaching the Israelis.

The powerful Times editorially criticized Bevin for being “slow” in arriving at an Angle-American plan for Palestine. The newspaper insisted that if the two major powers presented a joint plan to the Arabs and Jews at the Rhodes conferences now being arranged by U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, the plan had a good chance of being accepted and thus saving the negotiations from failure. The Times however, said the plan would have to acknowledge the need for definite frontiers for Israel, more “compact” than those suggested in the U.N. partition resolution.

Speaking at Sheffield yesterday, Bevin expressed confidence that a solution to the Arab-Jewish problem could be achieved. Pointing out that both peoples are members of Semitic races, he said the only difference between them is their religion.

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