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Hutcheson Returns to U.S. with Report Urging Admittance of 100,000 Jews to Palestine

April 24, 1946
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Judge Joseph C. Hutcheson, American chairman of the Anglo-American Inquiry Committee on Palestine, arrived here today by plane from Lusanne, Switzerland, carrying the Committee’s report, which is understood to recommended the immediate admission of 100,000 Jews to Palestine.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency learns that Judge Hutcheson will be rushed from Washington to Norfolk to meet President Truman who will arrive there tonight, so that he may submit the report to him before he reaches the capital to attend the funeral of Chief Justices Harlan Stone who died yesterday. Other members of the Committee are expected to arrive here from Europe by plans late today or tomorrow.

Well-informed circles here revealed that in addition to recommending the admission of 100,000 European Jews, the Committee also recommends that Palestine be placed under the United Nations Trusteeship Council when it is formed. The report, it is stated, does not contain any recommendation with regard to the future political status of Palestine.

(Reuter’s reports today that “Zionists will reject the recommendations of the Anglo-American committee’s report on the ground that they do not fulfill their demand for the setting up of an independent Jewish state.”)

The State Department today told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that it has not as yet seen the report. The official text will not be published before President Truman returns to Washington.

PLANS FOR PALESTINE PARTITION REPORTED REJECTED

Although the report was written under conditions of the greatest secrecy at Lusanne, on Lake Geneva, it was learned here today that all recommendations with regard to the partitioning of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states were rejected by the Committee.

While declining to make any comment on the report’s recommendations, Judge Hutcheson said that he had been traveling a long time, that he seemed to have been everywhere, that he was glad to be back and that he was looking forward to an early return to Taxes. He was not at the Washington airport by Loy Henderson, chief of the Near Eastern Division of the State Department, and by Gordon Narrian of the same division.

It is understood that Judge Hutcheson played a decisive role in the discussion at Lausanne and that it was he who insisted vigorously that 100, 000 Jews must be admitted to Palestine immediately, British members of the committee argued that so large a number of emigrants could not be moved quickly, but American military officials, summoned by Judge Hutcheson from Germany to give expert opinion, testified that the 100,000 could be transported from Europe to Palestine within a maximum of four weeks.

(The N. Y. Times reports from London today that the committee is also believed to have recommended the end of the policy of restricting Jewish land purchases in Palestine although safeguarding some Arab interests, particularly in the Arab section of Palestine.)

The State Department said today that it has not as yet been decided whether the report of the Committee will be made public through the White House or the Department. The decision seems to be up to President Truman. In the meantime, arrangements are being made for simultaneous release of the report in Washington and in London.

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