A crowd of several hundred Arab women, both Christians and Moslems, who planned to demonstrate before the American consulate to protest the Anglo-American Palestine report, was halted today by a cordon of British police, but refused to disperse until a delegation was allowed to proceed to the consulate.
The women marched from the El Aska mosque to the Church of the Holy Sopulchre, where several speakers attacked the Anglo-American report as a betrayal of the Arabs. Similar sentiments were expressed in banners carried by the demonstrators.
When they attempted to pass through the Jaffa Gate in the direction of the U.S. consulate, the women were stopped by the police. After a melee lasting more than an hour, during which no one was seriously injured, the women agreed to disperse when three of their number were allowed to proceed to the consulate. There, two of them were received by U.S. Consul General Lowell C. Pinkerton.
Meanwhile, Arab Leaders are reported to have decided to present a brief to the International Court of Justice at The Hague asking that Britain be stripped of the Palestine Mandate, if it seeks to implement the Anglo-American report. The committee’s recommendations, the Arabs assert, violate the Mandate.
Arab Catholics here added their voices to the protest today, when they cabled to King George VI, the Pope, President Truman, Premier Stalin, French Premier Felix Gouin and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, stating that implementation of the report would lead to the Jews supplanting the Arabs in Palestine.
David Remez, secretary general of the Histadruth, Palestine labor federation, speaking to the 16 Jewish leaders, who recently went on a hunger strike until the more than 1,000 Jewish refugees detained at La Spezia, Italy, received permission to enter Palestine, stated that there was no need for a single British or American soldier to unable the European Jews to enter Palestine and commence the peaceful rebuilding of their lives. He called on the Labor Party to implement its resolution favoring a national home for the Jews in Palestine and said he hoped that Prime Minister Attlee’s statement was not the last word of the British people.
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.
