Dr. Weizmann Discusses Palestine Question with British Foreign Secretary

Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, was received today by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and discussed the Palestine question with him. Present at the discussion was Colonial Secretary George Hall.

At the same time, Zionist labor leaders, led by Moshe Shertok, head of the political department of the Jewish Agency, were received today by a special sub-committee of the Labor Party executive for a discussion of the Palestine issue.

Although the British Government has never announced that it has decided to refer the Palestine issue to the Council of the United Nations, the London Times today publishes an editorial which reveals that such a step has been decided upon.

The action, the paper says, is right “not only because the Palestine problem has important implications affecting international security, but also because the undoubted debt owed to persecuted Jewry is owed by Western civilization as a whole, and cannot be discharged by vicarious action. It cannot be shifted onto the shoulders of the economically backward Arab world, which has done nothing to incur it,” the editorial declares.

Discussing President Truman’s request for the admission of 100,000 displaced Jews to Palestine, the editorial states that while no one can fail to share the President’s desire to relieve Jewish suffering, his suggestion that Britain assume the responsibility of altering at a stroke the population ratio in Palestine to the disadvantage of the Arabs will find little support. “It overlooked the dangerous contingencies in local tension that such action creates, and the risk of rendering impossible all the cooperation of the Middle East with the western world,” the editorial says.

BRITISH DECISION ON PALESTINE WILL BE ANNOUNCED IN PARLIAMENT

Anticipating that the Cabinet will announce its decision on the Palestine issue when Parliament reconvenes on Tuesday, the Chief Rabbinate in Palestine today proclaimed Monday as a day of prayer “to avert unfavorable action by Parliament” with regard to the Jewish demands for Palestine.

The London Daily Mail today reports that representatives of the Arab League in London claim that the Arabs have all the weapons they need. One of them is quoted as stating that the Arabs have in their possession “tons of shells, hundreds of guns, hundreds of thousands of rifles and millions of pounds of ammunition left by the British Eighth Amry in the desert.”

Daniel Auster, former acting mayor of Jerusalem, who is now on a visit in London, today told the News Chronicle that “without a doubt, the reports of hidden arms in Palestine are true. If thousands of refugees try to land in Palestine and there is bloodshed, Palestine Jews will see that the only course open to them is to act and do everything to bring the refugees into the country.”