Egypt Not Planning to Bring Palestine Issue Before U.N. Security Council

Egypt, although opposed to the recommendations of the Anglo-American committee, is not planning at this time to present the Palestine issue to the U.N. Security Council, according to a statement by Hafez Afifi Pasha, the Egyptian delegate and chairman of the Council, to O.H. Brandon of the London Sunday Times.

“The Anglo-American Palestine report is bound to cause serious friction and thus endanger peace in the Middle East, but for the time being the report remains only a recommendation,” Afifi Pasha is quoted as saying. “It has not yet been adopted by anybody and therefore there is no immediate reason why Palestine should be brought to the attention of the Security Council.

“It is a great and important humanitarian task to save the surviving Jews in Europe,” Afifi Pasha continued, “and as such, the problem deserves everybody’s support. Therefore we Arabs do not object to the efforts of the Anglo-American investigation, but when the Committee decides to recommend the sending of 100,000 Jews into Palestine and perhaps more later on without even suggesting that other countries share this burden, then the Committee’s recommendation becomes a political move.

“Egypt and other Arab countries would be prepared to accept sharing in the responsibility of saving European Jews but we would also expect the United States and British Dominions to participate in this. Yet not even an attempt was made by the Committee to investigate these possibilities, therefore one cannot but feel that this mass immigration into Palestine is designed to build Palestine into a buffer state within the Arab world to impede Arab unity.”