High Commissioner Sir Alan G. Cunningham today net with representatives of the Jewish Agency and the Palestine Arab Higher Committee to clarify various aspects of his call for a trace in Palestine.
He explained that his call was intended to save lives in the country while the political question was being discussed at the truce negotiations at Lake Success. The local armistice, he asserted, would be on a humanitarian basis and would leave the political issues alone pending a truce decision at the U.N. His views were later presented to the emergency session of the Zionist Actions Committee taking place in Tel Aviv.
At the Actions Committee parley, Eliezer Kaplan, Jewish Agency treasurer, proposed that a $20,000,000 loan for financing the Jewish national institutions be floated in Palestine. Reviewing the effects of recent political and military developments, he revealed that many branches of the Jewish economy had suffered severely during the four-months old war, but said that among the more encouraging developments was the integration within the Jewish economy of some 13,000 refugee immigrants in the last six months.
He emphasized the importance of maintaining control of supply lines to the Jewish cities, towns and settlements. He estimated that the Jewish community of Palestine raises 50 percent of its food, imports 43 percent and buys seven percent from local Arab sources. There is every expectancy of successfully coping with the present shortage of food, fuel and manpower, he added.
Dr. Emanuel Neumann endorsed David Ben Gurion’s call for the immediate establishment of a central Jewish authority in Palestine, Ben Gurion also declared that the Jews reject all varieties of trusteeship and while they are prepared to agree to a truce they suspect a “political trap” hidden in the appeal for an armistice.
The president of the Z.O.A. also reported to the parley that American Jewry is in full support of the Palestine community. “We Americans have lived under illusions concerning the Palestine situation,” he said, “now we have to face grim reality.” Dr. Neumann said the American trusteeship proposal was “in some respects worse than the White Paper of 1939.”
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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.
