The official Voice of Israel radio announced today that the Israeli Foreign Office has submitted a list of Arab “beaches of the truce of July 18, 19 and 20 to the United Nations representative in Tel Aviv.
These breaches of the truce are in addition to truce violations reported earlier in the Jerusalem area. They were attributed to Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi and Arab legion units.
Reports from Rhodes said that 66 American and Belgian military officers and men arrived there en route to Palestine to act as truce observers for Count Folke Bernadotte, U.N. mediator.
The Israeli Army is now holding more than 5,000 Arab prisoners of war, its chief of operations announced at a press conference today. He declared that fully 20 percent of the estimated 25,000 to 30,000 Arab troops of all the Arab armies fighting on Palestine soil had been killed, wounded or taken prisoner.
The army chief declared that Israeli forces now hold approximately 800 square miles of territory in Palestine beyond the frontiers assigned the state of Israel by the United Nations partition decision. Arab forces, he said, hold about 200 square miles of Israeli territory.
In the nine days of fighting between the end of the first truce and the new-cease-fire order, Israeli forces, he said, captured 14 Arab towns. The Israeli forces now hold 201 of 291 Arab villages in Israel territory in addition to 112 outside of Israel. He added that 12 Arab aircraft had been shot down over Palestine in the nine days.
The Iraqi commander in Palestine yesterday issued orders to his forces to cease fire. Copies of the orders were brought to the Jewish Army commander in the Jenin area by Arab dispatch riders. Two Israeli officers were killed yesterday when a vehicle in which they were riding struck a mine near Ben Shemen, in the Lydda district. Five passengers and crew members of a Jewish civilian plane forced down on the coast near an Arab village yesterday were found murdered today. Three others known to have been in the plane are missing and it is believed that they escaped.
Announcement was made today that the Israeli Government has completed a draft constitution. The document will be submitted to the initial meeting of the first Israeli constituent assembly to which elections will be held in October.
Next Tuesday, the forty-fourth anniversary of the death of Theodor Herzl, founder of political Zionism, will be celebrated throughout Israel as an official holiday. The army’s cultural and education department is arranging lectures for all army camps on that day linking Herzl’s vision of a Jewish state in Palestine with the new state of Israel and outlining the duties of the Israeli soldier to the state and to the Jewish people.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
