A meeting of the Israel Cabinet has been called for tonight, with all Ministers urged to attend. It was reported by reliable sources that a majority of the members of the Cabinet favor immediate transfer of the government offices and bureaus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but that the final decision will await the return here of Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, who headed the Israel delegation at Lake Success.
(In a statement at Tiberias last night, Premier David Ben Gurion declared that “no vote of the United Nations can alter the historic fact that Jerusalem is an inseparable part of Israel, and her eternal capital,” the New York Herald Tribune reported today. The same newspaper carried a dispatch to the effect that Jerusalem Mayor Daniel Auster said that the U.N. decision to internationalize Jerusalem can be carried out “only over our dead bodies.” He was referring to the Jews of Jerusalem, not to all Israelis.)
Chief Rabbis Isaac Herzog and Ben Zion Usiel last night cabled U.N. Secretary-General Trygve Lie repudiating the resolution which they termed “an assault on Judaism’s very soul and spirit.” They predicted that this document, like the British White Paper of 1939, would also “come to naught.”
The reaction of the people of Israel, who were glued to their radio sets Friday night hoping for a last minute reversal in the U.N. Assembly, was one of shook, bitterness and disappointment. In Jerusalem, itself, the population was grim and determined to oppose any imposed solution.
In Israel Government circles it was stated that the position of the Jewish state, as expressed at the U.N. during the debate in Jerusalem, would not now be modified. The General Assembly’s action was seen as reflecting unfavorably on the prestige of the international body, since it is obvious here that the resolution cannot be implemented without the cooperation of the people of Jerusalem, who are determined to defeat its purpose.
It was learned reliably that the Herut Party, successor of the underground Irgun Zvai Leumi, has decided that “if the government fails to move into Jerusalem within ten days, the party will proclaim Jerusalem an independent city.”
HAGANAH VETERANS OF SIEGE OF JERUSALEM TO FIGHT INTERNATIONALIZATION
The Committee for the Defense of Jerusalem called its first meeting to decide on means for preventing the internationalization of the city. About a thousand Haganah veterans met in Jerusalem last night to commemorate the second anniversary of the struggle against Arab marauder to keep open the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
The meeting was addressed by Col. Yigal Alon, who commanded the operation to open the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road, and who is now on leave from the army. He and other high-ranking Haganah veterans vowed to continue the fight for Jewish Jerusalem, as they did two years ago.
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