Govt. Leaders Reported Reconsidering Palestine Policy on Eve of Labor Party Parley

With the United Nations General Assembly behind and the annual Labor Party conference scheduled to open on Monday at Margate, ##rs of the British Government were giving today serious consideration to the palestine problem.

Government opinion is still divided into two groups, as it was when the ##-Arab conference was held here last winter. One group, of which Colonial Minis-Arthur Creech-Jones is the spokesman, believes that a final decision must be ## and that partition is the only feasible solution, The second group, which is comminantly anti-Zionist, believes that Britain can convince the U.N. to accept the ##ison federalization plan.

Last January Foreign Minister Bevin was the leader of the second group, but it understood that the developments at the U.N. session and in Palestine itself have ##ed him to reconsider his stand. The new Soviet position is believed to have had ?iderable effect upon him.

If Bevin does change his mind, Jewish observers look to him to give some internation of his present position at Margate. However, they caution that it very ### is too early to expect any change in the government’s position, and that the ### leaders may try to push through a resolution white-washing its present policy.

The Mapai, Jewish Labor Party of Palestine, has issued an appeal to the conference to remove the immigration and land purchase restrictions in Palestine during ## interim period before the U.N. renders its decision. Signed by Berl Locker, London representative of the Mapai, the appeal is made in the name of “justice and Socialist solidarity.”

It points out to the delegates that although the issue is in the hands of the U.N., the Labor Party cannot wash its hands of responsibility towards Palestine and ##lls on them to reassert the Party’s traditional stand on the question and to submit qualifying brief to the U.N. probers. Condemning the “irresponsible deeds” of the ##stremists, the appeal urges the British Government “to cut the ground from under his ugly phenomenon.”The Palestine debate at the convention will occur next Thursday, it was re##aled. Bevin will personally defend the government’s policy.