A Jewish truck driver was seriously wounded today in an Arab attack near the Dead Sea as Arab bands were reported transferring their activities from northern to southern Palestine under cover of heavy rains which obliterated their tracks.
The driver, Isaac Fernbach, 40 years old, was at the wheel of a Palestine Potash Company truck being convoyed from the potash works to Jerusalem when the attack occurred abut ten miles north of the Dead Sea.
As the terrorists moved southward, they crippled rail communications by removing a section of the tracks between Tulkarem and Kalkillia. Troops were giving up their billets in Arab villages of the acre district because of the comparative quietness of the northern district.
A Jewish pedestrian was slightly injured when a bomb exploded near the entrance to a workers’ restaurant on Jerusalem’s King George Avenue, the city’s busiest thoroughfare. Several Arabs in a passing automobile were arrested. For the second time in two months an unsuccessful attempt was made to assassinate Mayor Suleiman Toukan of Nablus.
The courage of Jewish settlers in building a national home was praised by General Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope, retiring High Commissioner, paying a farewell visit to colonies in the Esdraelon Valley. He planted a tree in the new settlement of Kvutza Batelem, praised the heroism of the Dagania settlers for building a colony “on the border of the desert” and promised to send the colonists portraits of his friends, Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff and Shmarya Levin, the late Zionist leaders.
Meanwhile, persistent reports of a renewal of efforts to solve the Palestine problem by joining the Holy Land and Transjordan to Syria or Iraq, were being received from the Italian radio station at Bari, the Transjordan capital of Amman and other sources. Prominent Transjordanian are reported proposing a referendum on the question, and Emir Abdullah is said to be opposing this move.
Arabic newspapers report that a collective fine imposed on Hebron for disorders in the vicinity has been annulled after a protest strike by shopkeepers.
A Jew, Julius Silberman, was convicted in Haifa of smuggling ten revolvers and 1,200 bullets into the country and sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment.
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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.
