Israel to Protest to Security Council on Detention of 10.000 Jews on Cyprus

The Israeli mission to the U.N. will protest to the Security Council against the detection, of some 10,000 Jewish refugees in Cyprus, it was announced here today.

“The Security Council’s truce resolution does not authorize the United Kingdom or any other power to detain Jewish refuges. The U.N. mediator has informed the Council that he had not asked for their detention, as being essential for the observance of the truce,” an Israeli statement said. “There is no legal basis for it and the United Kingdom, despite frequent inquiries and protests, has repeatedly refused to state the legal grounds for its action. The continued imprisonment of these refugees is a denial of human rights and a contribution to human misery,” it added.

“In view of the fact that the United Kingdom is responsible for arbitrarily inflicting this cruelest of mass refugee suffering, the suggestions of the United Kingdom on the general refugee problem will be awaited with great interest,” it continued, declaring: “Moreover, history will not soon forgot that it was the Palestine policy of the United Kingdom which kept hundreds of thousands of despairing Jewish refugees from a home in Palestine during the Nazi persecution and after the war. It is as a result of that policy, that there are still Jewish DP camps in, Europe three years after the war.

“So far as the Arab refugees are concerned, their plight is a direct consequence of the fact that Arab armies invaded Palestine in a war against the U.N. Palestine decision and the responsibility must be borne by those who made that war and those who supported it,” the statement said. “Solution of the Arab refugee problem can be quickly discussed only when there is an assurance of permanent peace,” it concluded.

GRIMES OF VIOLENCE DROP IN ISRAEL MINISTER REVEALS

Crimes of violence in Israel are 30 percent lower than a year ago in towns and 50 percent fever in rural areas, according to the first report of Minister of National Minorities Bechor Shitreet, released here during the week-end. The Ministry is also responsible for police functions.

While crimes of violence have decreased, offenses against property are prevalent, but “in the present circumstances, it is to the credit of the population that crimes are not more numerous and to the credit of the police that arrests are made, convictions secured, stolen property recovered,” Shitreet said. A breakdown of crises between May 15 and July 15 shows that the incidence of housebreaking has dropped oharply with the exodus of Arab Inhabitants.

While considerably expanded, the police force is still at less than half strength and is giving up its younger men for army service. In their place, older men are being enrolled. By July 1, there were about 1.00 officers, 70 NCOs, and 1,300 men trained and posted and another 100 men undergoing basic training. The force is now replacing men in the wireless and traffic departments, the quartermaster’s branch and the pay office with women.

Shitreet revealed that the police force is preparing to take over control of Arab areas from the army. Some 15 Arab policemen are serving as guards over abandoned property in Jaffa and will form the nucleus of the force there, Other Arab areas will be similarly organized.

Although the organization of the Israeli police force was hindered by the “complete disorder” in which the British left the records and buildings of the Palestine Police, Israel was able to organize its police force immediately after the establishment of the Jewish state, the report said. Criminal records of the Palestine Police had been left in complete disorder, the buildings were stripped of equipment and the political records burned.