Impressed by the fact that the Council of the League of Nations had rejected the proposal of the British government for a League-appointed commission to investigate the Wailing Wall question because of technical flaws in the proposal, and realizing that the Council is nevertheless interested in finding means of overcoming these technical difficulties, Great Britain is suggesting an alternative proposal.
The alternative proposal was made at the opening of the session of the Council, which heard the report of the Mandates Commission on the earlier British proposal for a commission to investigate the Wailing Wall question.
The new offer says that in order to render possible an early and final definition of the rights and claims of Jews and Moslems, the commission contemplated in Article 14 of the Palestine Mandate, should be set up immediately but that the functions of the commission should for the present be limited to defining and determining these particular rights and claims and the commission should be established on the clear understanding that before its functions are extended to cover any question concerning other holy places in Palestine, the matter would be resubmitted to the Council and proposals laid before it as to the future composition of the commission, in view of further duties which it would be then called upon to undertake.
In the report of the Mandates Commission to the Council, the Commission declared that in the first place it had “viewed with a certain concern the Mandatory’s departure in this case from the usual procedure in asking the Commission’s opinion without sending the request through the Council. The Council will appreciate the fact that the Commission’s misgivings were due to the want of a regard for proper deference to the Council. The Commission was doubtless right in not attaching excessive importance to a point of form in view of the nature, importance and above all, the urgency of the request. It did not see a way to
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.
